“A Place to Stand” Jimmy Santiago Baca

English and Literature

Paper instructions:

1. What cultural connotations are obvious in your chosen text?
2. Are those connotations problematic (ie, is the story exploiting racism, sexism etc)? Remember, you really don’t want to praise a text that paints an unfair portrait of any group. Just ask all the people who were fans of “The White Man’s Burden”
3. Could you quote the text in an essay without feeling guilty?
4. List 10 issues you could probably write about within the text.
5. Who is text’s audience? How do you know? What proof can you provide? (DO NOT say everyone. That’s rarely if ever true.)
6. Why is the text significant enough to warrant examination?
7. Remember, you can’t write about an entire novel, movie, or tv series in the short amount of pages you are working with, so what particular episodes, chapters etc warrant focus and why?
8. What is the effect of the text you are looking at? Does it change anything?
9. What are the influences on your chosen text? Who or what has an influence on the construction, characters, or text itself?
10. Why do you personally like the text?