Purpose
The class completed explicated and critical analysis essay that have examined issues of race and justice in literary works. Our final novel Patron Saints of Nothing follows a young Filipino-American in search of the truth about his cousin’s death, leading him to return to the Philippines roiling from the consequences of Duterte’s War on Drugs. Like our previous works, the novel deals with complex ideas of race and justice, but intersects these issues with hyphenated identities alongside imperial and colonist histories. To fully understand the more ambiguous meanings of the novel, such as characters like Tito Maning and the ending, students will combine their explication and writing skills with an extensive research process. Students will develop a research question characters, passages, and/or chapters in the novel and find sources for an Annotated Bibliography. The research project serves an introduction to research literary analysis that seeks to combine information gleaned from different sources to provide meaning to a text.
Writing Goals
For this essay, you will conduct in-depth independent research on a topic explored in “The Sellout” podcast. You will do this by demonstrating the following:
Evolving Thesis: In this essay, you’ll want to set up a thesis early on in your paper. This thesis should be a complex claim that offers an original idea or theory about your topic. For a deductive essay, you will state this complex claim in the introduction, support it throughout the essay using evidence and analysis, and return to your evolved/developed thesis in the conclusion. For an inductive essay, you will begin with a hunch, idea, or question in the introduction that you explore, develop, or answer throughout the essay using evidence and analysis, and you will arrive at an evolved complex thesis in the conclusion.
Evidence: As you lead readers through your discussion, you’ll need to provide a variety of
evidence used throughout the essay, in the form of primary and secondary sources. Your primary source will be Patron Saints of Nothing, and secondary sources may include peer reviewed articles about the Philippines, the War on Drugs, or other relevant topics. Avoid bringing in a source only to briefly mentioning it once. Consider how you can use
your sources multiple times, in different ways, throughout the essay.
Analysis: Your original ideas and insights will be a fundamental part of this essay. Instead of
merely repeating what others have said, your analysis should discuss the deeper
meanings of your evidence, and what it tells us about the novel. Ask yourself,
“So what?” Doing so will help you develop an argument about how your evidence offers a unique understanding of the text.
The Assignment
Multiple components go into a research paper. Each component works as its separate assignment but work together in the end. For example, your research question will affect your Annotated Bibliography, and your Annotated Bibliography will affect your research paper. Though you may change your research question or Annotated Bibliography and sources after submitting them, ultimately, your research paper has to use all components. A critical example of this is your research question which provides the foundation of your thesis. Changing your research question will affect your thesis.
Because the class moves quickly through the components, it’s important to keep track of your changes if you do decide to switch your question or sources. These do not need to be submitted to me. Keep a record for yourself in your notebook.
The components for the research paper are:
Research Question: The question explores and attempts to point towards analysis of a character, theme, imagery, metaphor, or chapter from Patron Saints of Nothing.
Annotated Bibliography: A collection of 3 sources that includes 1 source from our readings about neocolonialism and the Philippines, 1 peer reviewed source from the GCC OneSearch, and the novel. Each source will be annotated, meaning you will write about how the source is useful in answering your research question, is it a primary or secondary source, and why is it important to your analysis.
Finally, you will write a draft and final draft of your research paper that includes:
A well-crafted thesis that may be positioned at the end of your introduction or at the conclusion.
Includes your research question in the introduction.
Provides evidence using the sources from your Annotated Bibliography.
A conclusion that advances ideas discussed in class. For example, how does your research and analysis add to our conversations about race and justice?
