Justin Liang
Professor Rosen
ENG 2001-D536
4/21/18
Research Annotation
“Quicksand.” Edited by Rianna Walcott, Project Myopia, Sarah Thomson, 19 July 2017, projectmyopia.com/quicksand/.
Sarah Thomson write her recollection about what Quicksand was about. In this article Sarah talks about how race and color effects certain things Helga wants to do. Sarah uses the example in the book about when Helga is returning to the US. Sarah continues with saying how Helga’s “facile surrender to the irresistible ties of race seems almost inevitable, as we witness her trying and failing to transcend the issue of race in each community she inhabits” Using the example with Helga arriving to New York and wanting to turn back Sarah’s explanation helped me understand this.
“Harlem.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 May 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem.
I searched up the history of Harlem to find out why Helga Crane liked living in Harlem. I learned that Harlem is a community for people of color. This new information made me realize that when Helga first arrived in New York she wanted to go back due to the fact that there were mostly white people living there. She thought that she wasn’t going to be treated properly due to the fact of her skin color. So, stumbling to Harlem she saw that the community was mostly black and felt safer in a way.
“Quicksand – Introduction” eNotes Publishing Ed. Scott Locklear. eNotes.com,
Inc. eNotes.com 7 May, 2018 http://www.enotes.com/topics/quicksand#summary-summary-summary-introduction
I searched up summaries asking for why Helga didn’t want to stay in Denmark and marry Axel and stumbled upon this summary. In the summary it explains why Helga decided to go back to Harlem. The reasoning was because Helga says that she can’t imagine herself living forever away from colored people.  Reading this helped me see what Helga’s thought process for doing this.
Justin Liang
Professor Rosen
ENG 2001-D536
4/21/18
Glossary Annotation
Nasturtiums– A South American trailing plant with round leaves and bright orange, yellow, or red edible flowers that is widely grown as an ornamental.
I found this word in the first chapter and it was in the second sentence.
“Only a single reading lamp, dimmed by a great black and red shade, made a pool of light on the blue Chinese carpet, on the bright covers of the books which she had taken down from their long shelves, on the white pages of the opened one selected, on the shinning brass bowl crowded with many-colored nasturtiums beside her on the low table, and on the oriental silk which covered the stool at her slim feet”
After looking up the work I realized that the author was describing the setting in Helga’s room. Nasturtiums were the flowers that were next to her on the low table.
Unsparingly – Unmerciful; severe. Generous or unstinting.
I found this word in the first chapter on page 2.
“But that was what she liked after her taxing day’s work, after the hard classes, in which she gave willingly and unsparingly of herself with no apparent return.”
After looking up this work I kinda thought that Helga was going to her classes just to go. She just went but she didn’t receive anything in return
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I can see that you put a lot of work into researching secondary materials about the novel, as well as generating and defining a long list of vocabulary from the novel. Neither does exactly what the assignment calls for, so here are some suggestions:
For the glossary annotations, you should choose two words from the list and follow the instructions for our regular glossary entries. In addition to identifying words and defining them, your entries must include the passage where you found the word and an interpretation of the passage using your new understanding of the word from its definition. Post each glossary entry separately. You will refer to these annotations in your letter and link to the two posts each containing your glossary entries.
For the research annotation, you need to write a cohesive paragraph that conveys some new information for readers, so that when they get to a particular point in the novel, reading this annotation helps them understand something better about Helga, her surroundings, the people around her, etc. Try to synthesize the information you got from your sources to make an argument about what literary criticism says about some aspect of the novel. Be sure, though, that if you’re just choosing three sources, that you’re picking three of the best sources. An undergraduate research journal article might be useful to see what other undergraduates think about the novel, but that won’t be an authority on the scholarship on Quicksand.