While I wasn’t able to spend much time in the archives, I was nevertheless astounded by the amount of information available.  Additionally, Tom Munson’s knowledge of the archives and of the many books inside the archives was incredible. I think that making a return trip to the archives would provide me with a wealth of information that I would find useful in my project.

What surprised me the most was the amount of readily available material published by Sioux City authors, especially in regards to books which held their contents in facts. Being able to analyze the history of a place like Sioux City can contribute to my research by creating a setting which enables me to determine what the concerns of the population were.

Despite the fact that my library time was interrupted by a fairly lengthy phone call, I still felt like I accomplished a lot during my time in the library. For one, I was introduced to tremendous new resources in the form of the introduction to Bread Givers and the Abraham Cahan short story “A Ghetto Wedding.” I feel like this supplemental reading will give me further fuel to help develop my paper.

I will be unable to attend the trip to Lincoln with the rest of the class, however, I have set aside library time on both Tuesday and Thursday to work on my paper. Aside from my primary sources, I will be using the library’s database to search for articles about the conditions of people around the turn of the 20th century.

The basic construction of my paper will be as follows. I will start with a brief introduction to the subject matter before introducing my thesis. From there, I will first dive into the contents of the primary texts. I will see how these texts highlight the concerns of different groups of women during a time when women were starting to gain more independence. My third section will be an analysis of secondary sources, seeing how they agree or disagree with the primary sources. The goal in this section is to see whether the concerns present in the fiction match what would logically be a person’s concern given their actual surroundings. My secondary sources are mostly intended to confirm the authenticity of my primary sources. Finally, I will present my findings in a nice, tidy, conclusion.

The works I will be using in my paper include, but are not limited to, the following: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Bread Givers, American Indian Stories, Madame Butterfly, A Japanese Nightingale, and A Ghetto Wedding.