“Is Love Colorblind?” Essay

In “Is Love Colorblind?”, Steve Sailer takes a multi-pronged approach when dealing with interracial marriage. The paper is equal parts history lesson, sociological musings, and a call for change. Sailer begins by documenting how far interracial marriage has come in the last few decades: it has gone from being legally outlawed to increasingly prevalent. He [...]

The Origins of Subject A: A “Diseased” Tie-In

Of all the experiences Subject A and I would have over the course of our relationship…the first time I saw her feed sticks out in my mind the clearest. I had just begun tracking her in earnest when she led me to a local nightclub. I had wanted to see her in her natural habitat, [...]

“A Report on Our Recent Troubles” Essay

The thing I really liked about “A Report on Our Recent Troubles” by Steven Millhauser was that it took a very simple detail and fleshed it out into a full story. In “A Report…”, Millhauser turns a string of at-first unrelated suicides in a quaint little town into a powerful message regarding the degradation of [...]

“Biculturality and Homosexuality” Essay

Biculturality is an important facet in the lives of millions of Americans every day. A nation founded by immigrants, the United States has never ceased being the “promised land” for many different cultures during all periods of its existence. Minorities will always be an important element in the American experience, and the ability of a [...]

“Sand Creek: The Morning After” Essay

M. Annette Jaimes makes some pretty powerful statements in “Sand Creek: The Morning After”. Much of it deals with the Battle of Sand Creek, with emphasis on what it represented and what it continues to represent. Jaimes almost immediately launches into a full-scale attack and critique on the way the “colonization” of America has been [...]

“A WASP Stings Back” Essay

In “A WASP stings back”, Robert Claiborne makes several interesting points on his way towards defending a subculture of America known as WASPs: White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He begins by detailing how the WASPs have become the new favorite punching bag of popular media: popular magazines credits WASPs with “controlling” New York City, several locations are [...]

Capes

Superhero. Crime fighter. Masked do-gooder. Call it what you want, but it all boils down to the same thing: tights and capes, spandex and leather, powers and responsibilities. I live in a place called Alpha City, a sprawling omni-metropolis with a higher superhero percentage ratio than anywhere else in the world. Some of the best [...]

Abstraction Concrete Annotation

The titles in “Mercy” by Jean Thompson and “Helping” by Robert Stone play an important part in both stories, although it is only revealed towards the end of the stories that the titles serve as puns. Both “Mercy” and “Helping” are abstract ideas that connote feelings of sympathy and compassion, but their use in these [...]

Plot vs. Meaning Annotation

Both “The Man That Was Used Up” and “Me and Miss Mandible” feature bizarre stories with bizarre conclusions, but both of them feature a deeper, sincere message underneath their garish pretext. In “Me and Miss Mandible”, the story of a man discovering hidden aspects of his personality and making an important self-realization milestone is hidden [...]

Carver and Chekhov Annotation

From reading “Fat”, “Feathers”, and “Errand”, it is clear that Anton Chekhov has strongly influenced the works of Raymond Carver. Not only are their stylistic similarities, much of the plotting and character development closely mirrored Chekhov’s “Gooseberries” and “The Lady with the Dog”. While Carver puts his own unique spin on things, it’s clear that [...]