1. In Lucille Clifton's "sorrow song," she writes about "the extraordinary evil in ordinary men." Choose two of the following poems and explain how they convey this point: "the times," "the photograph: a lynching," "jasper texas 1998," or "Alabama 9/15/63."
2. How does Clifton demonstrate the interconnectedness between humans and nature in two of the following poems: "the earth is a living thing," "telling our stories," "fox," "the coming of fox," "dear fox," "leaving the fox," "one year later," or "a dream of foxes."
3. How does Tretheway's use of the carpenter bee in "Carpenter Bee" compare and contrast with either Giscombe's focus on boll weevils and coyotes in his essay "Boll Weevils, Coyotes, and the Color of Nuisance" or Hayden's "A Plague of Starlings"?
4. In Drew's "Hope and Feathers" and Blaeser's "This Weight of Small Bodies" both authors discover something about their relationship with the natural world through their travel to another country. Choose one of the essays and explain what the author learns.
5. In "Reclaiming Ourselves, Reclaiming America" Alarcon says, "In order to understand history and be able to exorcise the past, we need to relive this history in flesh and spirit. We need to reenact all the misunderstandings, confrontations, and contradictions, all the suffering and havoc brought about by the so-called discovery of this continent by Europeans" (236). Explain how he does this and how his idea relates to Houston's "Crossing Boundaries."
6. In Joseph Bruchac's "At the End of Ridge Road" he states, "that in the early days of the European migrations [to America] there were learned men who believed that American Indians were neither fully human nor truly capable of speech" (217). How does this observation relate to a similar belief that Nikky Finney challenges in her poem "The Thinking Men"? How do both authors challenge racial stereotypes?
7. Discuss thematic overlaps between two of the following: Martin's "Lynching Sites," Dungy's "Tales of a Black Girl on Fire," Alice Walker's "The Flowers," or Billie Holiday's repeated performance of the song "Strange Fruit." How do these texts serve as a crucial part in African Americans' attempts to heal from the trauma of racial violence?
8. How do two of the following texts-Wright's 12 Million Black Voices, Margaret Walker's "Sorrow Home," or Alice Walker's "The Flowers" challenge and complicate the Southern pastoral tradition?
9. In "Letter to My Son" Ta-Nehisi Coates describes how he (and his parents and grandparents) grew up with fear of violence against African-Americans. Describe one episode in Coates's essay that illustrates the impact of that fear on Coates' life.
10. In "Stop-and Frisk," Claudia Rankine repeats the refrain "And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description." How is this refrain related to the incident Rankine describes?