Paper 4: Southwest Prison Writing

English 345

Prison Literature

Spring 2014

Lockard

Paper 4: Southwest Prison Writing

Preparation

Read:Ken Lamberton, Wilderness & Razor Wire and Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand

Question

Ken Lamberton and Jimmy Santiago Baca constitute two high points of contemporary Southwest prison writing. They have achieved international notice for their work.

These two writers arrived in prison along very different social trajectories. Lamberton was a white middle-class high-school teacher who had earned professional distinction; Baca emerged from a Chicano working-class broken family and had little education. What they shared was a transformative experience in prison, especially through the power they discovered in their writing.

Despite topical differences, Baca and Lamberton employ an underlying conceptual structure common among prison narratives: a struggle for self-redemption. This is redemption in a secular personal sense, not a religious sense – although there are many examples of the latter in prison literature. Thus the question for this essay assignment: compare and contrast how Baca and Lamberton achieve redemptive self-transformation.

Feel free to incorporate brief references from earlier course readings that are helpful in establishing your argument. As in all papers for this course, remember the principle: answer the call of the question.

Evaluation

A persuasive paper will be one that frames a broader argument from the outset, and employs brief textual evidence in support of the specifics of that argument. Remembering that these few pages are an exceedingly brief space in which to frame an argument, ensure that your response has a single, analytic, and unifying thesis, not multiple

argumentative claims. Your paper should not be one that is simply a paragraphed checklist of disparate observations, followed by a gross generalization, irrelevant truism, or false conclusion. Above all, I love a paper that is both passionate and well-argued.

Your paper will be graded on the basis of (a) a clear and convincing argument that emerges from the beginning; (b) a focused examination of the implications of that argument throughout the paper; (c) appropriate use of brief citations to provide evidentiary support for the argument; and (d) competence of writing skills and absence of technical errors. There will be a significant grade deduction for disregarding the terms of the question.

Technical

This paper should total 4complete double-spaced pages, not including a title page. Use 1-inch margins and 12-pt. Times New Roman type. Short papers will be marked down.

Single-space citations and use parenthetical page references (no footnotes). Text citations should be very brief, illustrative, and no more than a line or so. Excessive use of quotations will lead to a grade mark-down, as will short papers.

In stylistic terms, avoid unnecessary first-person reference (e.g. “I think…”) or overuse of the passive voice.

Do no library or online research. Your ideas are what matter, not someone else’s opinion. For this reason, plagiarism will be treated in strict accordance with university policy guidelines.

Due date: Wednesday, April 30, 11:59pm, as a deposit via Blackboard. Late papers will not be accepted without medical certification.