L204 Rogers Summer ‘11

Map Narrative I get you a better map, and more map of today. Map of today, how the world

out together today, not yesterday, not long time ago. –The Known World

50 points ~500-750 words Due M 6/27

Purpose Formulate and share your “known world.” Think critically about what perspectives you bring to the class. Practice using the elements of fiction (plot, point of view, tone, etc) that the authors of our short stories and novels use.

Assignment Compose an annotated map of your Bloomington. As a rough guide, you might choose 5-6 locations, writing 100-150 words per location. I recommend that you use Google Maps for this assignment, but you can use any method that makes sense to you (photo collage, narrative tour, etc).

Why maps? In a key scene in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Sandy Stranger realizes that “other people’s Edinburghs” are different from hers. Though she has lived in the same city all her life, the experiences she’s had there have made her Edinburgh a special kind of trap from which she feels she must escape. ROOM takes place in a location that is “not on any map,” and getting back on the map is a key drive for characters bent on escape. And The Known World is named after a distorted map, reflecting the distorted perceptions of the people living under slavery. In each of these novels, a map of the key locations from which a central character escapes helps readers understand both the motivations for, and the costs of, escape.

In your map, you’ll connect to the characters in our novels by exploring the meaningful locations in which you live. To succeed, your map narrative should tell a story and/or develop a theme. This means you will have select locations carefully.

Other Details While I will give you clear and precise instructions for analytical papers, the details here are left deliberately vague. I want you to perform this assignment in a way that is fun for you, and a way that pushes you to write in a way you’ve never written before. Bring in a physical copy of your map, or at least of the text to your map. If you compose your essay in Google Maps, come prepared with a working link to your map.

Evaluation Strong performances will:

Delight and entertain the class, or at least help us get to know you Teach you something about yourself Teach us something about you Teach us something about Bloomington Demonstrate deliberate experimentation with some element of fiction (tone,

plot, imagery, figurative language, etc) Be free of careless sentence-level errors

1