Reading Assignment; suggestions for Weekly Paper #1

For Monday, please read: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/


As you read, please think about possible connections (connections between ideas, rather than connections between events) between Coates and Lorde (and Broderick).

For instance, in Lorde's "The Master's Tools [...]," the examples of the "tools of the master" that she gives include: the "either/or model of nurturing," and the equation of marriage with prostitution without regard for the experience of women who have been forced into (actual, non-metaphorical) prostitution. 

If you had to identify the tools of the master in Coates's essay, what would they be? 

Are they the same "master"? If not, what are the differences?

Also think about connections to your personal experience. Try to think of specific events in your life that inform your understanding of the essay.


For your first weekly response paper--I've thought about our class yesterday, and I think that maybe I was a little too hasty trying to get you to make text-to-text connections on the fly. Probably it's easier to start out with trying to apply ideas that you encounter in a text to your own experience, rather than to your interpretation of another text.

So:

Re-read Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." As you read, think about times in your life when you might have felt disadvantaged, dealt with unfairly.  (Or times when you've seen somebody else treated unfairly.) Pick a specific quote from Lorde to talk about, and while you're explaining it, work in your story into your explanation.

(^This is more of a strong suggestion than an actual assignment--please feel free to write about other things. No matter what you write about, though, please make sure that you are responding to something specific in the text. And quote what you're responding to!)