Mid-Term Examination Topics

Make your choice between these two topics for your Mid-Term Examination. Comprehensive Examination details are in the LIBS 7026 Mid-Term post. Keep in mind that all of the material and ideas referenced by each of the two topics is directly and entirely from lecture.

1. The Innocent Traveller is a story, or a diary, or an history, or an autobiography, or all four of these at once, or something else entirely, of the birth of our city of Vancouver; originally called "Terminal City". Use your essay to detail how the passage of the book which describes the shipboard encounter between Annie and the American actor is used by its narrator to explain how that book itself came to be written. You will probably want to structure your argument on the book's important treatment of Time.
2. Precisely how does Joy Kogawa's Obasan manifest a paradox that is at the foundation of the character of Vancouver? Frame your answer with reference to the expatriot Chinese community in Vancouver at the time that the narrated events in Joy Kogawa's childhood took place.Use specific examples from Obasan to form your explanation.