Write notebook entries in response to the following prompt: Write in response to the prompts on the syllabus / weekly schedulebut do not feel restricted or bound by them.
Try to write at least 200 words or so in response to each prompt.
In Literature: A Portable Anthology, read:
Claudia Rankine, “You are in the dark, in the car . . .” (771-72)
In “You are in the dark, in the car . . .,” Rankine narrates a series of vignettes, brief incidents or scenes: driving with a white man who has hired her, “a person of color” (ll. 2-3), to teach in an English Department; witnessing a racist incident in Starbucks and then another on a subway platform; being insulted by a therapist with whom she has an appointment for “trauma counseling” (l. 47). Do these vignettes connect to tell a larger story? How would you summarize the plot of the entire poem?
What does the speaker in Rankine’s poem seem to express about her life? How would you describe her tone: Angry? Hurt? Bitter? What about the subway scene–does the incident lift her spirits? What does her theme, her overall meaning or message, seem to be?
In the video “Indifference to Racism,” Rankine questins what she calls the “ground level indifference” with which people in our society respond to prejudice against and suffering of others. How indifferent, how lacking in empathy, are Americans, in your experience? Cite examples from your observations of others in your own life and / or in the news or other media that illustrate the indifference OR the empathy of Americans.
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