Our English classrooms are often only as vibrant as the literature that we teach. This book explores the writing of contemporary American author, Barbara Kingsolver, who offers readers and students engaging fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that confront the reader and the world. Here, teachers will find an introduction to the works of Kingsolver and an opportunity to explore how to bring those works into the classroom as a part of the reading and writing curriculum. This volume attempts to confront what we teach and how we teach as English teachers through the vivid texts Kingsolver offers her readers.
New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek “Kingsolver brilliantly captures both the price of profound change and how it can pave the way not only for future generations, but also for a radiant, unexpected expansion of the heart.” — O: The Oprah Magazine The acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, and recipient of numerous literary awards—including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Orange Prize—returns with a story about two families, in two centuries, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future. How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own. In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men. A timely and "utterly captivating" novel (San Francisco Chronicle), Unsheltered interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.
Our English classrooms are often only as vibrant as the literature that we teach. This book explores the writing of African American author Ralph Ellison, who offers readers and students engaging fiction and non-fiction that confront the reader and the world. Here, teachers will find an introduction to Ellison's works and an opportunity to explore how to bring them into the classroom as a part of the reading and writing curriculum. This book attempts to confront what we teach and how we teach as instructors of literature through the vivid texts Ellison offers his readers.
Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. "As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain. "Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ." Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. "This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air." Includes an excerpt from Flight Behavior.
Best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver's life and works are explored in this comprehensive, unique reference guide. Ideal for book club members and essential for high school students, this valuable resource introduces the plot summaries as well as theme and character analysis for seven of Kingsolver's major works. Kingsolver's usual topics, primarily focusing on the working class, environmental issues, feminism, and Native American studies, are closely examined in relation to current events and contemporary popular culture. Also discussed are Kingsolver's presence on the Internet, as well as the media's reception of the author. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking, analytical discussion questions, ideal for encouraging book club conversation as well as stimulating classroom discussion. The What Do I Read Next chapter will delight readers who enjoy Kingsolver's work. This guide is a must-have for public and high school library shelves! Best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver's life and works are explored in this comprehensive, unique reference guide. Ideal for book club members and essential for high school students, this valuable resource introduces the plot summaries as well as theme and character analysis for seven of Kingsolver's major works. Kingsolver's usual topics, primarily focusing on the working class, environmental issues, feminism, and Native American studies, are closely examined in relation to current events and contemporary popular culture. Also discussed are Kingsolver's presence on the Internet, as well as the media's reception of the author. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking, analytical discussion questions, ideal for encouraging book club conversation as well as stimulating classroom discussion. The What Do I Read Next chapter will delight readers who enjoy Kingsolver's work. This guide is a must-have for public and high school library shelves!
“An emotional masterpiece . . . A novel in which humor, passion, and superb prose conspire to seize a reader by the heart and by the soul.” —New York Daily News From Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Bean Trees, and other modern classics, Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman’s struggle to find her place in the world "Animals dream about the things they do in the daytime just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona, to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.
Literature that confronts our students' assumptions about the world and about text is the lifeblood of English classes in American high schools and colleges. Margaret Atwood offers works in a wide variety of genres that fulfill that need. This volume introduces readers, students, and teachers to the life and works of Atwood while also suggesting a variety of ways in which her works can become valuable additions to classroom experiences with literature and writing. Furthermore, this volume confronts how and why we teach English through Atwood's writing.
This is an introduction to the literature of contemporary American writer Clyde Edgerton. A North Carolina native, Edgerton has been compared to Mark Twain for his easy, humorous style, which is based in oral tradition. Like Twain and other humorous writers, Edgerton's work often contains both biting satire and exploration of very large questions about the human condition. The book contains an overview of each of his novels and his memoir in addition to offering critical commentary on theme, craft, and structure. Pedagogical support is offered with specific strategies that will encourage authentic engagement and learning. Teachers will find specific companion pieces of literature for introducing Edgerton's vivid and challenging work. This book presents the case for including more of Clyde Edgerton's work in our secondary and college English language arts classrooms as a means of revitalizing curricula and challenging the ways we traditionally think about teaching.
Howard Zinn is one of the most celebrated historians and social activists of our time. Raised in a working class family in Brooklyn, he was a shipyard worker and union organizer when World War II began. He served as a bombardier in the European Theatre and this experience shaped his opposition to war as an instrument of foreign policy. He became active in the civil rights movement as well as the anti-war movement from the 1950s to the 1970s. He is perhaps best known as the author of A People's History of the United States, published in 1980. This study of Zinn's life and work opens the door to many aspects of historical study generally untouched in traditional secondary and collegiate survey courses in United States history. To Zinn, history is not an objective account of the past to be indelibly carved into the brains of American citizens; rather, history is an ever-changing palette of events as people react to the contexts and cultures they find themselves immersed in. By considering the lives and thoughts of less politically and socially prominent individuals, students have the opportunity to re-examine their own beliefs and assumptions about contemporary American life. Students will gain insight into how history is constructed and recorded through a consideration of the life and writings of Howard Zinn.
Our English classrooms are often only as vibrant as the literature that we teach. This book explores the writing of contemporary American author, Kurt Vonnegut, who offers readers and students engaging fiction and nonfiction works that confront the reader and the world. Here, teachers will find an introduction to the life and works of Vonnegut and an opportunity to explore how to bring his works into the classroom as a part of the reading and writing curriculum. This volume attempts to confront what we teach and how we teach as English teachers through the vivid texts Vonnegut offers his readers.
