(1) Contrast the gentle tone of Dove’s “Adolescence—I” with Gwendolyn Brooks’s ironic “We Real Cool.” Comment on the cost of adolescent coming-to-knowledge.
(2) Apply the term “lyric narrative” to Thomas and Beulah. Determine which segments are most lyric and which are earthbound in straightforward narration.
(3) Compare Dove’s historical, female-centered scenarios with those of poets Anne Sexton, Cathy Song, and Lorna Dee Cervantes or of fiction writers Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Marquez, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Laura Esquivel.
