Short Reading Response Essay Women in American History, American River College
This 3-page essay worth 150 points (15%) of your overall grade will help you reflect on Kindred by Octavia Butler. Your essay must be turned in on the course website on Canvas before class starts (canvas.losrios.edu) on the due date. A rough draft or detailed outline is due in class on Tuesday, February 25 and the final draft is due on Canvas on Thursday, February 27.
You can get 10 points extra credit for enrolling in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC). I encourage you to take drafts of your to WAC or to one of the Beacon Tutors for help with edits and revisions. You can also make an office hours appointment to ask for my feedback. If you do this, you are guaranteed to get a better grade!
Grading: To do well you need to: • Fulfill the basic requirements: 3 full pages, double-spaced, with citations (references) to the reading using MLA or Chicago-Style footnotes.
• Show that you’ve done all of the reading by citing information from throughout the reading.
• Present a clear thesis statement in the introduction to your essay (this is worth the most points)
• Provide examples and quotes from the reading to support your argument.
• Strong essay structure (introduction, focused paragraphs with topic sentences, etc.).
• Minimal/no grammar and punctuation mistakes.
• See the grade rubric on the back for additional detail about how this will be graded.
Format:
• Double spaced • Times New Roman or Cambria Font • 11 or 12 pt. font
• Citations: MLA or Chicago-Style Citations (not just quotes, all information you use from the reading).
• Uploaded as a Word doc (preferably) or PDF (acceptable) on Canvas only.
Question to answer: Reading Response: Kindred, by Octavia Butler
• In Kindred, Octavia Butler tells the story of a black woman who becomes a slave. How were Dana’s experiences as well as the experiences of the other enslaved women in the novel influenced by gender?
In other words, how were their experiences distinctive because they were women? For this essay, the key to doing well is not simply to list things, but rather to come up with a thesis statement analyzing the gendered experiences of enslaved women as presented in the novel.
• Related deadline: Bring a hard copy of a draft or a detailed outline of your essay to class to workshop on Tuesday, October 1. For a model of what a detailed outline should look like, download the “outline” document in the Resources module on Canvas. This must include a thesis statement and evidence from the reading. You need to have finished reading the book to do this part of the assignment correctly.
