Approximate length: 5-7 pages as measured in double-spaced, 12-pt Times New Roman font with 1″ margins

Outside research: your essay must cite at least ONE scholarly article or book discovered through the use of our library resources; just ask if you are having difficulties finding such scholarship

The goal of this second, longer critical writing assignment is, again, to allow you to engage more thoughtfully and at greater length with one or more of the texts we have read this semester. Building on the types of feedback you have received on your first essay and your own greater experience writing on literature in a critical way, your essay will again develop an argument that supports its claims with carefully chosen evidence from the text(s), and presents a further opportunity to demonstrate and improve your analytical and close reading skills. You will also begin to conduct your own research into the secondary literature, and practice situating your own voice in relation to the voices of other scholars.

Below is a list of possible areas of inquiry you may choose to explore. Keep in mind that these are simply prompts intended to help get you thinking: for example, if a prompt asks several specific questions, you need not answer all of them, or even any of them. Move in whatever direction most interests you, even if it ends up carrying you a distance away from the prompt.

Does the novel ‘Ghost Boys’ offer a solution to the problem of police violence in the US? What sorts of solutions might the narrative suggest? What does it understand to be the roots of the problem? How does the novel make its case about what needs to change or what needs to be done, from a rhetorical perspective? What role might storytelling have to play in addressing police violence?