11 st

21 Century Literature
of the Philippines and the
World
Activity Sheet
Quarter 3 – MELC 1
Writing a Close Analysis and Critical
Interpretation of Literary Texts

Grade 11 – 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD
Competency: Writing a close analysis and critical interpretation of literary texts and doing
an adaptation of these require from the learner
Prepared by Mrs. Edna J. Alfaro
For clarifications please send me a message to the following: Cellphone no.: 09291311778 /
09219750824 - Facebook/Messenger: Hanz Alfaro

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 Quarter 3, Week 2
Learning Activity Sheet (LAS) NO.2

Name of Learner: _____________________ Grade and Section: __________________

Date: _______________________________

21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD

ACTIVITY SHEET

Writing a Close Analysis and Critical

Interpretation of Literary Texts

I. Learning Competency

Writing a close analysis and critical interpretation of literary texts, applying a reading
approach, and doing an adaptation of these require from the learner the ability to identify:
representative texts and authors from Latin America and Africa.

II. Background Information for Learners

This learning activity sheet contains learnings and activities about representative
texts and authors from Latin America and Africa.

Latin American Literature refers to written and oral works created by literary writers
in South America, and the Caribbean. The languages which Latin American authors usually use in
writing are Spanish, Portuguese, English, or a language native to their specific country. Latin
American literature is the literature of the Spanish- speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere.
Historically, Latin American Literature also includes the literary expression of the highly developed
American Indian civilizations which was conquered by the Spaniards. So, as the years went, Latin
American literature was able to develop a rich and complex diversity of themes, creative idioms,
and styles.
Among those included in the Latin American literature are the Dominican Latina
writer Julia Alvarez with her novel, In the Name of Salome, rising contemporary literature star Yuri
Herrera from Mexico with his groundbreaking novel, Signs Preceding the End of the World,
Pulitzer Prize-winning Junot Diaz with one of his earlier short stories, “How to Date a Brown Girl
(black girl,white girl, or halfie),” and Haitian Edwidge Danticat’s short story, “Ghosts.”

Africa is called the “Dark Continent” because most people know very little about this
continent since it remained unexplored over a long period of time. Their literature contains the
body of traditional oral and written works expressed in Afro-Asiatic, African, and European
languages. Modern African literatures were born in the educational systems imposed by
colonialism, with models drawn from Europe rather than existing African traditions.
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 Among the African literary texts and authors are : Poems, “My Black is Beautiful (Woman)”
and “My Black is Beautiful (Man)” by Naomi Johnson, Short Story, “A Private Experience” by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Short Story, “Inscape” by Yaa Gyasi, Short Story, “War for God” by
Zaynab Quadri and “The Sack” by Namwali Serpell.

III. Accompanying DepEd Textbook and Educational Sites

1. Elizabeth Ann Wynne Gunner, Lecturer in African Literature, School of Oriental and
African Studies- https://www.britannica.com/art/African-literature

2. https://21stcenturylitph.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/literature-from-latin-america/

3. http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/curriculum/unit-three/module-eleven/activity-one/

4. www.topplelearning.com

IV. Activity Proper

Exercise 1
Instructions: Read the poem below from the African Poetry. Then write a close analysis and
critical interpretation of the text. Use the following questions to guide you in doing the task on long
bond paper. (Note: every time you write an analysis, it is always in a paragraph form).
 What is the major theme of the poem?
 How did the author present the plot of the poem? (describe the plot of the poem)
 Did the author use rhyme scheme at the end of each line of a poem?
 Did the author choose a free format in writing the poem?
 Did the author use figurative language as a literary device in the poem?
 Is the poem easy to be understood by ordinary readers like students?
 Did the author use strong emotions to control the language in the poem?
 Was the author’s nationality reflected in the genre of the poem?

Saturday
By: Charles Mungoshi (poet from Zimbabwe)

This is Saturday afternoon –

thunder in the air,
banana leaves rustling against the wall
the muted sounds of the children
playing rag ball out on the streets.

I have done my laundry,

washed up the pots, pans and plates.
My room is clean.

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 I have just taken a bath;
I am sitting by the window.

Far, far across the cocoa-coloured fields

across the river at the foot of those hills –
cars, like matchbox toys, hurtle
towards their weekend destinations.
I know I shall watch them
crawl back again on Sunday evening.
I know it: they can never escape
their destiny which is so deeply-etched
somewhere inside me.

This is Saturday afternoon

with nothing to do
thunder in the air,
banana leaves rustling against the wall
the muted sounds of children
playing rag ball somewhere in the streets.

I have done my laundry,

washed up the pots, pans and plates.
I have just had a bath
everything is clean, inside and outside.
I am sitting by the window
and all the world is here.

Where could anyone, or anything

possibly wish to escape to?

Exercise 2

Instructions: Write a close analysis and critical interpretation of the selection below. The following
questions will help you compose a paragraph. Do it on a long bond paper.
 Were the literary elements like theme, characters, setting, plot, conflict, tone, and
point of view clearly depicted by the author in the story?
 Do the characters portray realistic scenes?
 Does the author use clear and simple language in his writings?
 Does the story contain violent scenes and languages?
 Does the author use sensory imagery to capture the reader’s interest and emotion?

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 In the Name of Salomé
by Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

She stands by the door, a tall, elegant woman with a soft brown color to her skin
(southern Italian? a Mediterranean Jew? a light-skinned Negro woman who has been allowed to
pass by virtue of her advanced degrees?), and reviews the empty rooms that have served as
home for the last eighteen years.
Now in the full of June, the attic is hot. Year’s back, when she earned tenure, the dean
offered her a more modern apartment, nearer to the campus. But she refused. She has always
loved attics, their secretiveness, their niches and nooks, where those never quite at home in the
house can hide. And this one has wonderful light. Shafts of sunlight swarm with dust motes, as if
the air were coming alive.
It is time for fresh blood in this old house. On the second floor, right below her, Vivian
Lafleur from the Music Department is getting on in years and going a bit deaf, too. Every year the
piano gets more fortissimo, her foot heavy on the pedal. Her older sister, Dot, has already retired
from Admissions and moved in with her "baby" sister.
She herself is worried about the emptiness that lies ahead. Childless and motherless,
she is a bead unstrung from the necklace of the generations. All she leaves behind here are a few
close colleagues, also about to retire, and her students, those young immortals with, she hopes,
the Spanish subjunctive filed away in their heads.
She must not let herself get morbid. It is 1960. In Cuba, Castro and his bearded boys are
saying alarming, wonderful things about the new patria they are creating. The Dalai Lama, who
fled Tibet last year on a yak with the Chinese at his heels, has issued a statement: One must love
one's enemies, or else all is lost. But these are positive signs, she reminds herself, positive signs.
It is not a new habit of hers: these efforts to rouse herself from a depressive turn of mind she
inherited from her mother. Now, playfully, she imagines the many lives she has lived as captioned
by the title of one or another of her mother's poems. How should this new life be titled? "Faith in
the Future"? "The Arrival of Winter"? or (why not?) "Love and Yearning"? The horn honks again. It
will probably be titled "Ruins" if she doesn't get downstairs soon! Marion is impatient to go, red-
faced and swearing, jerking the steering wheel as she turns the car around. "Lady driver," one of
the men mutters under his breath.
"Everyone who is anyone is getting out." "Well then, I'll have no problem. ‘I'm Nobody—
Who are you?'" She loves to quote Miss Dickinson, whose home she once visited, whose fierce
talent reminds her of her own mother's. Emily Dickinson is to the United States of America as
Salomé Ureña is to the Dominican Republic—something like that.
"You are not nobody, Camila," her friend scolds. "Don't be modest now!" Marion loves to
brag. She is from the midwestern part of the country, and so she is easily impressed by
somebodies, especially when they come from either coast or from foreign countries. ("Camila's
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mother was a famous poet." "Her father was president." "Her brother was the Norton Lecturer at
Harvard.") Perhaps Marion thinks that such reflected importance will stem the tide of prejudice that
often falls on the foreign and colored in this country. She should know better. How can Marion
forget the cross burning on her front lawn that long ago summer Camila visited the Reed family in
North Dakota?
She couldn't possibly see me; the professor is thinking. I am already gone from this place
before she leaves, she makes the sign of the cross—an old habit she has not been able to shake
since her mother's death sixty-three years ago. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of
my mother, Salomé.
Her aunt Ramona, her mother's only sister, taught her to do this. Dear old Mon, round
andbrown with a knot of black hair on top of her head, a Dominican Buddha but with none of the
bodhisattva's calm. Mon was more superstitious than religious and morecranky than anything else.
Back then, it was a habit to kiss each parent's hand and ask their blessing before leaving the
house. La bendición, Mamá. La bendición, Papá. When her mother died, Mon thought up this way
for her to ask for Salomé's blessing. To summon strength from a fading memory that every year
became less and less real until all that was left of her mother was the story of her mother.
Years of teaching physical education have kept Marion fit and trim, and her hardy
midwestern genes have done the rest. She is warm-hearted and showy, kicking up a storm
wherever she goes. "Are you Spanish, too?" people often ask, and with her dark hair and bright
eyes Marion could pass, though her skin is so pale that Camila's father often worried that she
might be anemic or consumptive.
They have lived through so much, some of which is best left buried in the past,
especially now that Marion is a respectable married lady. ("I don't know about the respectable,"
Marion laughs.) In her politics, however, Marion is as conservative as her recently acquired
husband, Lesley Richards III, whose perennial tan gives him a shellacked look, as if he were being
preserved for posterity. He is rich and alcoholic and riddled with ailments.
"In the name of my mother, Salomé," she says to herself again. She needs all the help
she can get here at the end of her life in the United States. Somewhere past Trenton, New Jersey,
to keep her restless friend from further distractions ("Light me a cigarette, will you?" "Any more of
those chips left?" "I sure could use a soda!"), she offers: "Shall I tell you why I have decided to go
back?" Marion has been pestering Camila ever since she arrived a few days ago to help her friend
pack. "But why? Why? That's what I want to know. What do you hope to accomplish with a bunch
of ill-mannered, unshaven, unwashed guerrillas running a country?" Purposely, she believes,
Marion mispronounces the word so it sounds like gorillas. "Guerrillas," Camila corrects, rattling the
r's.
She has been afraid she will sound foolish if she explains how just once before her life
is over, she would like to give herself completely to something—yes, like her mother. Friends

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would worry that she had lost her wits, too much sugar in her blood, her cataracts blurring all
levels of her vision. And Marion's disapproval would be the worst of all, for she would not only
disagree with Camila's choice, she would try to save her.
Camila takes a deep breath. Perhaps the future will be over sooner than she thinks. "I'm all
ears," Marion says when they have both recovered. Camila's heart is still beating wildly—one of
those bats that sometimes gets trapped in her attic apartment so that she has to call the grounds
crew to come get it out. "I have to go back a ways," she explains. "I have to start with Salomé."
"Can I confess something?" Marion asks, not a real question, as she does not wait for
Camila to answer back. "Please don't get your feelings hurt, but I honestly don't think I would ever
have heard of your mother unless I had met you." She's not surprised. Americans don't interest
themselves in the heroes and heroines of minor countries until someone makes a movie about
them.
"So, what's the story?" Marion wants to know. "As I said, I'll have to start with my mother,
which means at the birth of la patria, since they were both born about the same time." Her voice
sounds strangely her own and not her own. All those years in the classroom. Her half-brother
Rodolfo calls it her teacher's handicap, how she vanishes into whatever she's teaching. She's
done it all her life. Long before she stepped into a classroom, she indulged this habit of erasing
herself, of turning herself into the third person, a minor character, the best friend (or daughter!) of
the dying first-person hero or heroine. Her mission in life—after the curtain falls—to tell the story of
the great ones who have passed on. But Marion is not going to indulge her. Camila has not gotten
past the first few years of Salomé's life and the wars of independence when her friend interrupts. "I
thought you were finally going to talk about yourself, Camila."
"I am talking about myself," she says—and waits until they have passed a large moving
van, sailing ship afloat on its aluminum sides—before she begins again.

RUBRIC FOR WRITING COMPOSITION

Performance Areas Very Good Good Needs Improvement
10-8 7-5 4-1
Content Article has specific Central idea is Unable to find specific
central idea that is vague; non- supporting details
clearly stated in the supportive to the
opening paragraph, topic; lacks focus
appropriate,
concrete details
Organization Article is logically Writing somewhat Central point and flow of
organized and well- digresses from the article is lost; lacks
structured central idea organization and continuity

Style Writing is smooth, Sentences are Lacks creativity and focus.

coherent and varied and Unrelated word choice to
inconsistent with central idea
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 consistent central idea
understanding of
information in text
Mechanics Written work has no Written work is Written article has several
errors in word relatively free of errors in word selection
selection and use errors in word and use. Indiscriminately
sentence structure, selection and use, selected phrases or
spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, sentences.
and capitalization spelling, punctuation
and capitalization
(some have errors)

Remember
Latin American Literature are written and oral works created by literary writers in South
America, and the Caribbean. Latin American literature is the literature of the Spanish- speaking
countries of the Western Hemisphere.

Africa is called the “Dark Continent” because most people know very little about this
continent since it remained unexplored over a long period of time. African literature contains
the body of traditional oral and written works expressed in Afro-Asiatic, African, and European
languages.

V. Reflection
Copy and answer on a ½ sheet of paper.

1. What did you like most / didn’t you like about the activities?
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2. Which part of the activities did you find challenging?

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