Essays evaluate your engagement with the themes and texts of this course. Select

Essays evaluate your engagement with the themes and texts of this course. Select ONE of the posted prompts OR develop and respond to your own prompt. If you choose to respond to your own prompt, you must include the prompt above your response. Your essay must be 1,000+ words. Your essay must offer and support an argument related to the prompt you select/develop. If you elect to generate your own prompt, your prompt must address Mama Day.
Regardless of what you choose to argue, your essay must remain focused on the work under study. Your essay must incorporate textual support from at least TWO sources (support from the primary text AND one scholarly source). While you are free to include additional sources, your essay should balance analysis and support.
Your essay must present a compelling, coherent, and specific thesis that is consistently and thoroughly developed. I hope that you will see this as an opportunity to exhibit creativity and critical thinking. Your essay must support assertions with relevant examples from the texts. Summarizing the readings or relying on personal reaction will result in a lowered score or a grade of zero. Your essay should not offer plot summary but should instead present a debatable assertion that is situated in the introduction and supported throughout the essay. Failure to meet the minimum word count and/or incorporate the required number and type of sources will result in a significant grade reduction. Your work will be graded on the quality of your ideas as well as your writing. Criteria for grading include completeness, thoughtfulness, and development and support of a particular argument.
Prompts:
1) How does the legacy of slavery pervade this novel? How and why does Naylor weave history into this text? In what ways, according to the text, is the recounting of history problematic?
2) How is home defined in Mama Day? What, for Cocoa, does returning home accomplish? Why might Naylor stage part of the novel in Willow Springs, a town that’s “actually in no state?”
3) What does this text have to say about the role of powerful women? In what ways do the women in the novel exercise power? How are women a mystical influence in the text?
4) What does this work have to say about physical and emotional recuperation? What role does traditional medicine play? Who takes on the role of healer and why?
book: Mama Day: A novel by Gloria Naylor
scholarly sources attached