Humanities Homework Help

Twilight Los Angeles, 1992/Pandemic Los Angeles, 2021

Final Writing Assignment; 50 points

This assignment asks you to use Anna Deavere Smith’s original technique for capturing historical moments to craft your own monologue about our strange and distinctive historical moment: Quarantine Los Angeles 2020. You will use your multiple written reflections on your own experience here and now as the raw material from which you will craft your own distinctive personal monologue.

1) Name your monologue using a phrase that you take from the monologue itself.

2) Give a description of yourself and your surroundings at the beginning of the monologue, as Smith does in hers. You may use multiple fonts (as Smith does) if you wish.

3) Type your monologue out in the poetic typographical style that Smith uses rather than typing this out as you would a formal paper. Single-spacing. Don’t worry about MLA.

4) You can—and I’d love it if you did—opt to theorize about the quarantine and its future effects on the world, the US, human civilization, geopolitics, or family life rather than reflecting on your own experience. This means that Cornel West’s monologue or Maxine Waters’ first monologue will be better models for you.

5) This is a creative and personal writing assignment. Your piece should sound like you—like your voice. BUT this is also a graded piece of writing: Think about vocabulary, variety of sentence lengths and structures. Try to elevate your voice somewhat—make it a bit more striking and formal than your casual spoken speech. If you describe something or someone, make it vivid. Make the image come to life. Don’t just give me a bland list of things anyone else might say. Make it personal—make it such that your friends would know it was you even if your name wasn’t attached.

6) Edit your work. Just because this is a creative assignment, doesn’t mean that sloppiness is acceptable.

7) There is no word limit. Short or long is fine—but the length must feel authentic and suitable to what you’re saying.

Here is something you need to know about my life after quarantine:

• So after the school got shut down, I started to live with my friends, Kiko and Carrie, outside of the school. (because I went to a boarding school) It becomes so strange to cook for ourselves every meal, cause we usually have at least breakfast and lunch eating at school. And it was also hard for me to deal with online learning, because some of the class, like programming, works better in person. But we survived. Kiko and Carrie went back to China in late April, so I went to live with Linda before going back to China. I didn’t go back to China immediately because I was planning to take the SAT in person after the summer, so I was worried I couldn’t come back if I left. But after all the SAT got canceled, I finally went back home in October. Because I am studying AP Macro this year, so I know the pandemic has created a global economic recession. And with more help from fiscal policy, the economy will come back to normal soon. What this quarantine brings to people is that they have a new way of working. People don’t necessarily going to the office in person to do the work, more online school platforms will arise, and it changed how college requirements. Also, many people who couldn’t be with their family all time have the opportunity during the pandemic, spending time with their loved ones.
• Let me know if you need more stuff