Untamed

Use these activities to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

ACTIVITY 1: “Doyle’s Advice to a Fictional Character”

In Untamed, Doyle explains four “keys” that she believes can lead to freedom from the “cage” of gender expectations. In this activity, you will choose a fictional character whom you see as being trapped by society’s gender expectations and, writing from Doyle’s perspective, compose a letter to the character offering some advice about how to break free.

Part A: Choose a character.

• Your character can come from any work of fiction in any medium—comic books, television or web series, books, video games, etc.
• Choose a character from a source that you know reasonably well.
• The character you choose can be either female-presenting or male-presenting—do not choose someone whose presentation is androgynous.
• Choose a character whose life is significantly confined by social expectations for their gender—that is, someone pushed into a stereotypical performance of gender that does not seem to make them happy or fulfilled.

Part B: Write a letter of advice to the character, from Doyle’s perspective.

• Your letter should be at least a page in length.
• Consult the text of Untamed for typical features of Doyle’s voice, style, and tone; then try to mimic these as closely as you can.