Tuesday, Oct 12

Keep reading White Tiger and don't forget that we have a mid-term during Thursday's class! Part of the mid-term will be a passage identification and the second portion will be some essay questions. So make sure to bring your copies of the novels to class with you on Thursday! We will review what the mid-term will be like in today's class. Be sure to let me know if you have any questions about anything, OK?!

Some Comments on Reading ...

I know that we we get to the middle of the semester, it can sometimes be difficult to keep up the motivation in any class, including a literature course. To help a little, here are some words from Ben Ehrenriech, a novelist, on why he reads:

"There's a book I don't remember well, though I can remember precisely where I found it in my elementary school library -- three yards to the right of the door, in the middle of the third shelf from the floor.

I was, and remain, a compulsive reader. Back then, I read on the school bus, at the bus stop in the cold, at the dinner table, beneath the sheets and for hours sometimes in the only room with a door that locked, the bathroom, despite my sister's pounding. This book was about a solitary little boy who, as I did, had a nervous habit of tapping everything he touched, and counting the combinations of taps. One day, he tapped a wall of stone. A door appeared. Behind it was a different world, not better really, but brighter and less dull. I read for the same reason that he tapped: to look for doors, to push through walls."

I would encourage you to do the same -- "Push through walls." It will, I suspect, mae you a more well-rounded individual!

Good luck as you continue reading The White Tiger -- up to page 145 for Tuesday!

White Tiger!

For Tuesday's class, you need to have read the first 36 pages of Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (and Indian novel).

As you will soon discover, The White Tiger is presented as an epistolary novel, a series of letters written over the period of seven nights. I will be curious to know what you think about this narrator named Balram. Do you like him? Do you hate him? Something between the two?

As you will figure out right away, the person Balram is writing to is the premier of China, Wen Jiabao, due to visit the city Balram is living in -- Bangalore, India -- in a week's time. What, one wonders, could possess an Indian entrepreneur living in Bangalore to write at such length to the premier of China?

What do you think?? Happy reading and see you on Tuesday!

Almost Done with CHRONICLE!

Well -- everyone should be finished with Chronicle of a Death Foretold at this point! We will have our last class meeting on this novel on Tuesday! We will take one last quiz on this novel (it's comprehensive!) and then we will do an activity that will involve questions that cover the entire novel.

If you haven't already, make sure you get your hands on a copy of Aravind Adiga's White Tiger. This Indian novel will be our next "read." Don't forget that if you are short on cash, we have a copy of the novel on reserve in the library. Click here for the Wikipedia entry for the novel -- I will be curious to see what connections you can make back to Kehinde and to Chronicle of a Death Foretold! Happy reading!

Tuesday, Sept 21

So how is the reading going for Chronicle of a Death Foretold?? We will be having out first oral presentation on Thursday (Aaron, William, and Andrew L) so I want to "save" as much as the text as possible for those folks to be able to cover in their presentation.

When you come to class on Tuesday, we will start with a quiz on the reading selection due tomorrow and then we will spend the bulk of the class watching a documentary on Gabriel Garcia Marquez (interviews with this author are pretty rare, by the way!). See you in class!

Tuesday's Class

First, I will make sure and hand out the oral presentation dates in class on Tuesday. We will quickly review what each group will need to do in order to prepare for their presentation slot.

Second -- you are offically done with one novel! Only five more to go! We will take a quick "break" for Tuesday's class in order to talk about Kehinde as a whole and to watch an American version of polygamy. Is the American version anything like what we saw with Kehinde's family?

We will be starting Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, for Thursday's class. Click here for some basic information on this South American writer.

See you in class on Tuesday!

Thursday, September 2

I appreciate the great discussion we had in class on Tuesday! So let's see what you folks can come up with for Thursday's discussion!

Click here for another great web site that talks about Emecheta in general.