Prepare a Topic

• 1). Skim anthologies (such as those in the Resources) to list possible topic areas and choose one or two distinct objects of study: a historical event, biography, work of art, short story, song or poem. For example, you might choose the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1876-77 as a historical event, Rosa Parks for biography, or the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Visit your college library catalog and its online database subscriptions in order to find secondary sources; for example, "Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism," would count as multiple sources because it includes several academic authors.
  
  
• 2). Choose one quotation from your primary source, introduce its author and title, summarize its meaning, cite the source, analyze the quotation's significance and write a topic sentence that summarizes your analysis at the paragraph's beginning. Repeat the process for a similar line of thought in two or three of your secondary sources --- for example, the use of gravity in "the lost baby poem." Then repeat the process for another idea in your primary source and two or three other secondary sources --- for example, the use of fluids in the poem --- until you have written approximately 75 percent of the number of pages of the body of your paper.
  
  
• 3). Create an idea group that you can transform into a section of your paper by cutting and pasting each annotated primary and secondary source paragraph into a logical order and writing connecting paragraphs in between each source paragraph that explain how the secondary sources relate to your primary source. Include an introductory paragraph by writing both a section sentence that summarizes the findings of the group --- your analysis of the primary and secondary source paragraphs --- and a subtitle above the group that summarizes the section sentence. Repeat the process for each section of your paper.
  
  
• 4). Summarize the section sentences into a main thesis and use it to write the introduction by suggesting what benefits your thesis contributes to understanding an aspect of African-American culture. Write a conclusion that rewords the thesis and explains the greater significance of the topic you chose to African-American culture at large.
  
  

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