Bad Boy: A Memoir

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay. 

Scaffolded/Short-Answer Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Consider the role the Dodgers play in Bad Boy.

• Why is Myers so invested in the Dodgers’ success as a young boy and teen? (topic sentence)
• Choose two passages where Myers discusses the Dodgers and analyze them with reference to your topic sentence.
• Finally, use your concluding sentence or sentences to explain how Myers’s interest in the Dodgers relates to either the nature of personal identity, the desire for community, or being Black in mid-20th century America.

2. Consider how Myers describes Florence and his relationship with her.

• How does Myers’s relationship with his mother change over the course of Bad Boy? (topic sentence)
• Choose three passages that illustrate different phases in Myers and Florence’s relationship and explain how they do so.
• Finally, use your concluding sentence or sentences to explain what Myers’s relationship to Florence says about the relationship between parents and children.

3. Consider Myers’s voice as a narrator.

• How does Myers’s voice as an adult compare to his speech as a child and teenager? (topic sentence)
• Compare and contrast one instance of Myers’s narratorial voice with one instance of dialogue from his youth.
• Finally, use your concluding sentence or sentences to explain what the evolution of Myers’s voice says about the power and limitations of language.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Choose one of the literary works Myers describes reading as a boy. If you’ve read the work yourself, think about its topic, tone, and themes. If you haven’t read it, briefly research what it’s about, how readers have responded to it, etc. (consider also Myers’s own discussion of the work). How might reading that work have influenced Myers in writing Bad Boy? Reference specific evidence from the text in your response.

2. As a young man, Myers spends a lot of time thinking about masculinity and the way it intersects with factors like race and class (especially with regard to his interest in reading and writing). Consider also Myers’s relationship with his father, and the latter’s remark that the military would “make a man” of Myers (Chapter 18). Bearing all this in mind, what does Bad Boy ultimately suggest about what it means to “be a man”?

3. Reread the following passage: “I didn’t want to be defiant. I wanted to be in the system that I was walking away from, but I didn’t know how to get in” (Chapter 12). What makes Myers a “bad boy”? In what ways is his “badness” a reflection of the society he grows up in? In what ways does this idea of badness reflect racist stereotypes or assumptions?