Today we began our discussion of Essay 3, the research essay, because I wanted to get a sense of what topics Kailin was potentially interested in researching. She is split because she’s really interested in Chinese American immigration, but she’s curious about the immigration of other Asian groups as well. She said she might focus on one group, or compare/contrast different groups. I asked her to do some research, select her topic, meet with a research librarian, and send me a list of potential sources for next week before she goes ahead and does the Annotated Bibliography. I also emailed her some sources that might give her a starting point from an immigration class I had taken last semester.
We then worked on the revision of Essay 2. Her argument was repetitious at times, so we worked on cutting out that repetition and instead having her say it once as clearly as possible. Her argument (about New Orientalism in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club) also contained many unfounded generalizations about Easterners and Westerners, so we worked on how she could specify her points by referring to the characters in the Joy Luck Club text.