Assignment: The Africana Experience
General Book Review Guidelines
1. What is the subject matter of the reading? You may start with a broad contextualization of the subject matter, main idea, or argument.
2. What are the salient and auxiliary ideas, issues, and/or arguments? These two pointers will guide you in crafting an introduction.
3. Discuss each of the salient points/issues and their supporting facts or arguments.
4. Do you find these arguments, discussions, and expositions convincing?
5. What knowledge or experience of the issues, ideas, or events discussed in the reading do you have that supports your position above?
6. Evaluate the organization of the reading. Is it easy to understand?
Your essay should be free flowing using full sentences and paragraphs to structure and organize your thoughts and ideas. The guidelines above are just that: guidelines.
Note: The title of your review should be: the author and title of the reading being reviewed.
Additional Book Review Guidelines (The Souls of Black Folk)
1. As you work on this assignment, your discussion should be informed and framed by the focus of this class.
2. Just as Achebe's Things Fall Apart focused on the experience and civilization of an African civilization and culture group, Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk selection is aimed at helping us understand the African American experience (descendants of Africans in the United States).
3. To this end, you may want to focus on the experience (read this experience as the social, economic, and political problems) of Black America after the emancipation in 1865 up till 1903 when Du Bois' book was published (which was his objective in publishing the book).
4. You also need to identify and discuss Du Bois' blueprint for full emancipation.
5. A good way of evaluating the book is to access the efficacy of Du Bois' recipe for full emancipation.
6. To conclude your review, you can compare race relations today to what it was in 1903.
7. Avoid the temptation of plagiarizing the myriad of sources that are online (e.g., Wikipedia, Sparknotes, etc.). Be warned also that I have an archive of past essays on this assignment for the past 10 years. Any plagiarized work will score a zero. In addition, the student will be referred to the Office of the Dean of Students for additional sanctions.
8. Pay attention to the formatting requirements for this assignment on page 5 of the Course Syllabus.
Requirement of Book Reviews :
To develop/refine The Souls of Black Folk.You will be penalized for having less than or exceeding 2 pages.
• Each book review essay must include the following:
o Your name, Course Number and Section (AFAS 160A1: 101), and Date on the top, left hand corner of your first page. This becomes your header.
- Any essay missing the writer's name (student's name) will be rejected and deemed a missed assignment.
o The title of your review essay should be: the author's last name followed by a comma, the author's first name followed by a colon (:) and title of the reading reviewed (e.g., Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart). This title should then be underlined.
o You may also move the two items above to a title page. The title page formatted this way will not count toward the page requirement.
o Essay must be saved and submitted as a Microsoft Word Document. Essay submitted in any other format such as pdf, rtf, .Pages and others will not be evaluated.
• Formatting Guidelines for Book Review essays:
o Use, 1" margins, Times New Roman 12 point font-type and size, and double-spaced.
o Essays must be saved and submitted into the ASSIGNMENT folder as Microsoft Word document. Essay submitted in any other format (e.g., PDF; .pages; .rtf) will not be graded. You may then resubmit the assignment for half credit during the rewrite period.
o The length requirement for this assignment is TWO pages. This length requirement excludes a title page or Works Cited, if used.You will be penalized for exceeding or having less than two pages.
• The rubric for the book review assignment is under.