English 242 endeavors to critically examine the popularized binary between fact and fiction, and between objective history and subjective experience. Our task will be to question the widely held belief that novels are simply works of personal or private imagination, whereas the writing of history pertains to true events. How do we know what is “true” or “objective”? Can novels be “real” or “true”? In fact, many scholars have argued that certain novels fill in or speak for what dominant history cannot account for, or what history silences. How and why does literature perform this task? How do literature and history tell stories? What kinds of stories are being told? How is storytelling a political act? Rather than perpetuate the truth vs. fiction binary, we will re-conceptualize these terms by tracing a connection between the writing of history and the writing of fiction.

In order to address these questions, we will be reading Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, along with various critical and theoretical articles. As this is a “W” course, there will be three major writing assignments throughout the quarter (each 5-6 pages in length), as well as in-class peer critiques and online discussion board assignments.