Paper Assignment 2, Due Monday, March 2, in class
You have a job as an editorial assistant for the publisher, George Braziller, in New York. The editor for
whom you work has received a manuscript that she has asked you to review. The manuscript is a novel
by the writer Buchi Emecheta. It is the story of the life of a woman named Adah who leaves her home in
Nigeria to come to England. The title that Emecheta has proposed for the book is Adah’s Journey. Your
editor thinks this doesn’t really capture the novel and has asked you to propose an alternative. Your
alternative is Second Class Citizen. Write a memo of no more than 750 words in which you justify your
chose, using at least 3 quotations from the manuscript to make your case. You do not have to
summarize the entire novel, because your editor has already read it too. But you do need to make a
persuasive case for your choice of titles.
You must give your memo a title. Make it snappy. You want to make sure to capture your boss’s
attention.
Note: This is obviously a role-playing assignment. My purpose is to encourage you think of the kind of
real-life situation in which being able to write, use evidence effectively, and make a persuasive
argument would make a difference.
For the direct quotations you use, indicate the source with an in-line citation (e.g., Emecheta, p. 47). The
in-line citations do not count as part of your 750 words.
Remember, by signing the expectations for the course, you have acknowledged that you will do at least
one draft of this paper before you submit a revised final draft.
A successful essay will:
? Present a clearly stated thesis in which you make clear why you are proposing this title.
? Judiciously select evidence from the text
? Structure the argument in a way that effectively develops your thesis
? Use that evidence (direct quotations from the text) that effectively to support your thesis