Write one complete essay in which you analyze the relationship between language and identity in one of the
texts from the following list:
The Bluest Eye, Morrison
“Lullaby,” Silko
“Woman Hollering Creek,” Cisneros
How does the text you’ve selected explore the ways that language shapes identity, including the cultural
politics of becoming literate within American society? How does it examine racial and gender ideologies
embedded within popular culture? How does it resist such ideologies while creating literature that crossfertilizes oral traditions and vernacular cultures with modern prose and poetic forms?