Personal argument responding to some aspect of one or more stories in the first unit dealing with racial or cultural dislocation/conflict/connection. Your writing will reflect on the factors (cultural, economic, religious, education) that inform your response to various parts of the chosen texts.

1.  Identify a character, setting, circumstance, or event from one of the stories and explain your response to it.  State and explain the  ethnic, religious, racial, sexual,  historical or social class factors that contribute to your response. Show what you have learned.  Define what is unclear. (Try to research some  answers to what is unclear.) Use examples from the text(s) when you talk about it. Use examples from your life when you talk about that.

2. Which character(s) were you able to sympathize with?  How is the character(s) like you?  What ways of thinking are extremely different?  Are those similarities/differences cultural, etc., or are they factors common to all humans?

3. Have you witnessed or experienced incidents where an individual or group of individuals is treated as "different" or excluded from a mainstream because of ignorance or misunderstanding? Describe the situation, the people involved, and the assumptions they operated under.  Compare this to one or more of the fictional events or situations you read about.

4.  We read several stories where individual behavior stems from group expectations or identification.  Have you experienced or witnessed events where group norms seem to control the actions and even thoughts of its members? Compare the situations.  Show why, in each case, a group can exert power over the individual. Speculate about people who  resist social pressure.