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Listed below are the novels that we will explore in the class.
Please choose three in order of priority that would interest you. To help you
choose, please investigate the text more in depth by visiting amazon.com or
barnesandnoble.com. ***Each of the above summaries was taken from amazon.com
reviews.
Fools Crow
by James Welch
The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the
chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young
warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made:
resistance or humiliating accommodation. "A major contribution to Native American
literature."--Wallace Stegner
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
by Walter Mosely
In this cycle of 14 bittersweet stories, Walter Mosley breaks out of the genre--if not
the setting--of his bestselling Easy Rawlins detective novels. Only eight years after
serving out a prison sentence for murder, Socrates Fortlow lives in a tiny, two-room Watts
apartment, where he cooks on a hot plate, scavenges for bottles, drinks, and wrestles with
his demons. Struggling to control a seemingly boundless rage--as well as the power of his
massive "rock-breaking" hands--Socrates must find a way to live an honorable
life as a black man on the margins of a white world, a task which takes every ounce of
self-control he has.
Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa
Lahiri
by James Tsai (see more about me) from Washington, D.C. Jhumpa Lahiri is a talented
writer, no doubt, (the book won the Pulitzer for 2000) writing with a poetic cadence and
within a genre that has recently become more and more of interest today -- the ethnic
genre. Writing about Indian-American and modern Indian experiences, Lahiri brings to life
a rarely considered experience in today's contemporary arena. The entire book is actually
a collection of short stories, with all of them with the the exception of one of them,
published in magazines, anthologies or newspapers. Some of the stories are told from the
viewpoint of immigrants, some from the Caucasian, and some from the second generation
Indian-American in search of an identity. What sets Maladies apart from other
books of this genre is her attention to the various emotions and feelings that seemed to
this reviewer to be very real and certainly identifiable. What may seem alien to
"normal," mainstream America in the strange Indian culture of pre-arranged
marriages, a love affair for spicy foods melt away with an understanding from the way the
story is told. Lahiri however, seems at times to over dramatize her stories by
over-relying on what she thinks is a panacea -- blinding candor. It's may seem tiring to
the reader when simple short paragraphs keep on popping up. Regardless, a window to
another world that is worth exploring more is opened and all readers should look through
it.
My Year of Meat
by Ruth Ozeki
"At first glance, a novel that promises to expose the unethical practices of the
American meat industry may not be at the top of your reading list, but Ruth Ozeki's debut,
My Year of Meats is well worth a second look. Like the author, the novel's
protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, is a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker; like Ozeki,
who was once commissioned by a beef lobbying group to make television shows for the
Japanese market, Jane is invited to work on a Japanese television show meant to encourage
beef consumption via the not-so-subliminal suggestion that prime rib equals a perfect
family.
The series, My American Wife!, initally seems like a dream come true for Jane as
she criss-crosses the United States filming a different American family each week for her
Japanese audience. Naturally, the emphasis is on meat, and Ozeki has fun with out-there
recipes such as rump roast in coke and beef fudge; but as Jane becomes more familiar with
her subject, she becomes increasingly aware of the beef industry's widespread practice of
using synthetic estrogens on their cattle and determines to sabotage the program.
Cut to Tokyo where Akiko Ueno struggles through the dull misery of life with her
brutish husband, who happens to be in charge of the show's advertising. After seeing one
of Jane's subversive episodes about a vegetarian lesbian couple, Akiko gets in touch and
the two women plot to expose the meat industry's hazardous practices. Romance, humor,
intrigue, and even a message--My Year of Meats has it all. This is a book that even
a vegetarian would love."
In the Time of the Butterflies
by Julia Alvarez
From the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents comes
this tale of courage and sisterhood set in the Dominican Republic during the rise of the
Trujillo dictatorship. A skillful blend of fact and fiction, In the Time of the
Butterflies is inspired by the true story of the three Mirabal sisters who, in 1960,
were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government. Alvarez
breathes life into these historical figures--known as "las mariposas," or
"the butterflies," in the underground--as she imagines their teenage years,
their gradual involvement with the revolution, and their terror as their dissidence is
uncovered.
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