How will you use They Say / I Say?

This week's assigned reading from They Say / I Say includes one chapter on "planting a naysayer in your text" and another one on "saying why it matters." For your blog post this week, instead of having you write on your own blogs, I simply want you to respond to this blog post with a comment that explains how you will use some of the concepts from the reading in your next essay. Describe how you will go about planting a naysayer in your essay. Work on crafting a persuasive argument for why your analysis matters.

Remember that your comment is due by Friday at midnight, and that you will then have only one week left to complete your Researched Analytical Argument.

Gloria Naylor's Shakespeare

Mama Day certainly seems to engage with Shakespeare on various levels and at various points throughout the narrative, yet if we think of the novel as an adaptation of The Tempest, it's clearly a kind of loose adaptation that doesn't try to closely follow the play. What then do we make of Naylor's use of Shakespeare in the novel? What are the consequences of reading the novel as a reimagining of The Tempest? What are some of the implications for the differences between the novel and the play? In other words, what is significant about the changes that Naylor made to Shakespeare's narrative? And, as a follow-up to that question, why do you think she bothered crafting a loose adaptation at all instead of writing something less engaged with a particular Shakespeare play (as is the case with her other novels)?

Your response to these questions should be thoughtful, and your blog post needs to show a deep engagement with the novel and with our course theme more generally.