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Listed below are the novels that we will explore in the class.
To help you choose, please investigate the text more in depth by visiting
amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com.
Fools Crow
(Contemporary American Fiction)
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
My Year of Meats
by Ruth
L.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:
TO: AMERICAN RESEARCH STAFF
FROM: Tokyo Office
DATE: January 5, 1991
RE: My American Wife!...
Here is list of IMPORTANT THINGS for My American Wife!
DESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Attractiveness, wholesomeness, warm personality
2. Delicious meat recipe (NOTE: Pork and other meats is second class meats, so please
remember this easy motto: "Pork is Possible, but Beef is Best!")
3. Attractive, docile husband
4. Attractive, obedient children
5. Attractive, wholesome lifestyle
6. Attractive, clean house...
UNDESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Physical imperfections
2. Obesity
3. Squalor
4. Second class peoples
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition
of this title.
The Things They Carried : A Work of Fiction
by Tim O'Brien
A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award,
The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between
Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and
the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is
neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination
of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested
in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it.
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.
***Each of the above summaries was taken from amazon.com reviews.
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