Essay Two: Presenting an Argument about Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette or Zadie Smith’s On Beauty As Diana Hacker notes, “All good writing about literature attempts to answer a question, spoken or unspoken, about the text” (646): “Why is ‘Araby’ a story of initiation?” “In what ways does Raymond Carver’s ‘What we talk about when we talk about love’ explore different concepts of love?” A concise and insightful literature paper should answer such questions with a “meaningful interpretation, presented forcefully and persuasively” (646). Purpose and Skills: To analyze a play or novel. Relying on close reading and theme, you will explore structure and patterns and formulate an argument about the text under scrutiny. How do form and content interact to reinforce a theme? To integrate definitions into a paper about literature. To formulate an original, thought-provoking thesis with an argument that goes beyond the obvious. Maybe select a “friction-rich” relationship of patterns and structures to focus on in your thesis.  To develop, present, complicate, and advance your argument. To support your thesis with convincing reasons. Imagine you were a lawyer defending your case in court. To provide textual evidence and support for your ideas to substantiate your argument in the thesis. To address and refute a counterargument based on the possible contradictions or gaps in the primary text and/or secondary literature. To demonstrate your understanding of the analysis of a literary text by applying relevant literary terms. To integrate secondary literature in a meaningful way. Knowledge:  The assignment will help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline: 1. The elements of a play and a novel. 2. Relevant historical context. 3. Critical Theory 4. Reading, analyzing, and critical thinking. 5. Writing: Formulating an argument. Readings: Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette or Zadie Smith’s On Beauty Background and Writing Task: This assignment requires you to reflect on, analyze, and present an argument about our play or novel by the authors we discussed in class. Bear in mind, instead of just dumping information on the reader, make your central argument the center of gravity of your paper. Avoid merely summarizing the text. Instead, organize your paper around YOUR argument. To help you develop ideas and prepare the background section of your paper, reread the text you would like to write about and go over the questions in our PowerPoint presentations and your notes from class. Please make sure to include specific evidence from the texts you are analyzing to support your points. Maybe ponder our class discussions? Maybe brainstorm before you create your outline? Maybe look for tension, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication in the text? Maybe include secondary literature. The final draft of your paper should be a 5- to 6-page essay (12 point font, 1” ma ...

1. Essay Two: Presenting an Argument about Hanif Kureishi’s
My Beautiful Laundrette
or Zadie Smith’s
On Beauty
As Diana Hacker notes, “All good writing about literature
attempts to answer a question, spoken or unspoken, about the
text” (646): “Why is ‘Araby’ a story of initiation?” “In what
ways does Raymond Carver’s ‘What we talk about when we talk
about love’ explore different concepts of love?” A concise and
insightful literature paper should answer such questions with a
“meaningful interpretation, presented forcefully and
persuasively” (646).
Purpose and Skills:
To analyze a play or novel. Relying on close reading and theme,
you will explore structure and patterns and formulate an
argument about the text under scrutiny. How do form and
content interact to reinforce a theme?
To integrate definitions into a paper about literature.
To formulate an original, thought-provoking thesis with an
argument that goes beyond the obvious. Maybe select a
“friction-rich” relationship of patterns and structures to focus
on in your thesis.
To develop, present, complicate, and advance your argument.
To support your thesis with convincing reasons. Imagine you
were a lawyer defending your case in court.

2. To provide textual evidence and support for your ideas to
substantiate your argument in the thesis.
To address and refute a counterargument based on the possible
contradictions or gaps in the primary text and/or secondary
literature.
To demonstrate your understanding of the analysis of a literary
text by applying relevant literary terms.
To integrate secondary literature in a meaningful way.
Knowledge:
The assignment will help you to become familiar with the
following important content knowledge in this discipline:
1. The elements of a play and a novel.
2. Relevant historical context.
3. Critical Theory
4. Reading, analyzing, and critical thinking.
5. Writing: Formulating an argument.
Readings: Hanif Kureishi’s
My Beautiful Laundrette
or Zadie Smith’s
On Beauty
Background and Writing Task:
This assignment requires you to reflect on, analyze, and present

3. an argument about our play or novel by the authors we
discussed in class. Bear in mind, instead of just dumping
information on the reader, make your central argument the
center of gravity of your paper. Avoid merely summarizing the
text. Instead, organize your paper around YOUR argument.
To help you develop ideas and prepare the background section
of your paper, reread the text you would like to write about and
go over the questions in our PowerPoint presentations and your
notes from class. Please make sure to include specific evidence
from the texts you are analyzing to support your points.
Maybe ponder our class discussions? Maybe brainstorm before
you create your outline? Maybe look for tension, interest,
ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication in the text? Maybe
include secondary literature.
The final draft of your paper should be a 5- to 6-page essay (12
point font, 1” margins, double-spaced) that analyzes in depth
and presents an original argument about Hanif Kureishi’s
My Beautiful Laundrette
or Zadie Smith’s
On Beauty.
PAPER TOPIC AND WRITING TASK:
Please choose one of the following topics:
1. In his book,
The Location of Culture
. Homi K. Bhabha argues
Terms of cultural engagement, whether antagonistic or
affiliative, are produced performatively. The representation of
difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given
ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The

4. social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective,
is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize
cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical
transformation. The ‘right’ to signify from the periphery of
authorized power and privilege does not depend on the
persistence of tradition; it is resourced by the power of tradition
to be reinscribed through the conditions of contingency and
contradictoriness that attend upon the lives who are ‘in the
minority.’ (2)
Reflecting on Bhabha’s definition of cultural hybridity, please
create an argument about how the main characters in
My Beautiful Laundrette
navigate their identity in terms of race, class, and gender,
sexual orientation, and the way they deal with trauma.
2. Please discuss the extent to which
My Beautiful Laundrette
challenges monolithic identities and nationalism through the
“difference-within” (Barbara Johnson) and heterogeneity.
3. Please compare and contrast Hanif Kureishi’s
My Beautiful Laundrette
and Stephen Frears’s movie adaptation.
4. Pondering our discussions, please analyze
On Beauty
as a multicultural university novel. How does the novel
negotiate transnational black identities?
5. Please discuss the representation of femininity in
On Beauty
. How do the female characters challenge the masculine sphere,
and what is the implication of female intervention in the novel?
6. You are also very welcome to choose your own topic, but

5. please discuss your angle of the paper with me.
Key Features:
An introduction that establishes the essay’s shared context
and your point of entry (see our online outline handouts).
What is the shared context and the nature of the controversy
concerning your topic? What is your angle? To what extent
is your paper going to intervene in a discussion?
A “friction-rich” thesis. You should concentrate in a nutshell
what you wish to emphasize – your central idea, the point
you want to make about your topic. Try to go beyond the
obvious. Imagine your reader is educated and might come up
with the same claim you are positing, which might be a
reason why you might want to rephrase your thesis. Go back
to your notes and try to look for tensions, ambiguities, gaps,
complexities, and complications in the text. Try to use your
insights to formulate a thesis. Since your thesis is an
argument about the text, it should be debatable and as
specific as possible (compare our handout on how to
formulate a compelling thesis). Your thesis is the jumping-
off point for the main body.
The body should develop, complicate, and advance the
argument in your thesis, providing evidence in form of
textual support. The body paragraphs should be
appropriately organized, including the use of clear topic
sentences or signposting. The paragraphs should be in
logical order and use transitions to show links between
ideas. Remember, your body paragraphs should reinforce
your thesis.
Three scholarly outside sources (peer reviewed; print and/or
online from Canvas, and/or CSUN database (e.g. MLA,

6. Project Muse, JSTOR))
Address a possible counterargument to your claim and refute
it.
A conclusion that provides closure to the essay and
considers the implication of your argument.
MLA Style (heading, margins, title, line spacing, page
numbering, parenthetical citation, and a Works Cited Page);
see our MLA 2016 handout on Canvas.
Observance of the conventions of standard written English.
Assignments:
Outline
Create a detailed outline of your essay that contains the shared
context (critical theory), a thesis with an argument, topic
sentences for your body paragraphs and textual evidence to
support your points, as well as analysis and explanations.
Please compose a conclusion.
Rough Draft Due: 5/1
Please bring 4 copies of your rough draft (minimum 3 pages) to
class. After the peer editing session, you are also very welcome
to discuss your paper with a tutor in the Learning Resource
Center in The Oviatt Library.
Final Draft Due: 5/10
Submit your final draft in Turnitin and please turn in a hard
copy with your peer edited rough drafts and outline to me.

7. MLA
In-text Citation
EXAMPLE: Neely argues that Desdemona, like Emilia, is
"indifferent to reputation" (Neely 224).
Short quotations from the novel (shorter than four lines) or
secondary literature should be incorporated into your paper in
the following way:
EXAMPLE: It may be true that “in the appreciation of medieval
art the attitude of the observer is of primary importance”
(Robertson 136).
Use longer quotations (more than four lines) when you are
going to analyze the passage in detail; otherwise, paraphrase the
background information, and quote only the significant
portions. If you use long quotations, make sure that you
discuss
them after you introduce them. Longer verse quotations should
be laid out in the following way:
EXAMPLE: Besides depicting the immense power of
survivorship, David Dabydeen is interested in the intersection
of race, history, and sexuality, as well as the effect of trauma—
caused by colonialism—on the slaveholders’ and slaves’ bodies
and sexuality:
Well I [Dabydeen] think that the Empire has been looked at
from the perspective of sociology, history, political economy
etcetera; but the Empire was also an enormous erotic project.
What I was interested in was bringing to the surface the latent

8. eroticism of the encounter between black and white, because it
seemed to me that that would be revealing a relatively
unexplored aspect of imperial relations. (Birbalsingh 184-185)
Please consult the
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
, 2016 edition for formatting, citations, your list of Works
Cited. Please check our updated MLA style sheet 2016 on
Canvas.