The sudden death of a beloved fourth grade teacher shocks the class and forces the students to explore the concept of death and how to cope with their emotions. Our nine-year-old protagonist thinks no one could possibly understand these feelings and decides to bottle them up. However, the more the other students discuss their past experiences with grief, the more our main character realizes opening up to the right person is actually helpful. When children experience a significant death, their emotions are in flux and they grapple with all of the questions related to life coming to an end. How we teach children to cope, will have a direct impact on them for the rest of their lives. Included in this book, are suggestions for how to express grief as well as a helping section for adults.
"You Wouldn't Understand" looks at ethnic diversity in schools through the eyes of teachers rather than pupils. It tells the story of one white teacher's developing understanding of how her own racial and ethnic background influenced the way she regarded and taught the mainly South Asian Muslim children in her classes. She began with a belief that narrowness in the curriculum was her students' problem, but she came to see the bigger picture. The book charts her gradual realization that many of the problems lcome from her own lack of understanding of race, racism, and her own racial identity. The book explores the idea of whiteness as not a biological but a social construction, and one which influences white people's ways of seeing the world in often unnoticed ways. The author relates whiteness to aspects of her own behaviour, which she recorded in a diary over five years. The book also considers the children's struggles to construct and understand their own emerging identities in this environment, and the views of several other white teachers, some of whom shared the author's confusion and doubts, and others who were more confident about teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. This searching analysis of the innards of whiteness and the way it affects how white teachers approach pupils who are not white is illuminating and important. It should be required reading for all teacher trainers and all white trainee teachers, as well as for white managers and teachers working in multi-ethnic schools.
An anthology of 62 stories from around the non-Euro-American world providing new definitions of cultural diversity and commonality and an invaluable tool for teachers responding to the growing need for multicultural literature. Over the past two decades, sweeping political changes and burgeoning new technologies have resulted in communities being increasingly defined in global as well as regional and national terms. Although the intellectual terra nova of world cultures remains largely uncharted, this anthology of sixty-two stories from around the non-Euro-American world provides what Elisabeth Young-Bruehl calls "an introductory map to the great wealth of literary works now being produced in, at once, the particular settings of the writers' experiences and the global setting." Young-Bruehl finds that while the cultural diversity the stories exemplify is amazing, so too is the similarity in thematic terms of the concerns that this diversity presents. Thus she organized Global Cultures thematically to highlight and clarify how these worldwide cultures both converge and diverge. A comprehensive general introduction outlines forces behind the transnational approach to literary study and chapter introductions contextualize each story. Stories from India, Cuba, South Africa, and Uruguay are connected by the theme of exile and immigration; tales from Nigeria, Guatemala, Cameroon, and Egypt share a theme of political violence and civil uprisings; works from Taiwan, Chile, Jamaica, and Syria describe commonalities of women facing effects of modernization, prejudice, war, and immigration. Global Cultures contributes to the fast-growing body of contemporary short fictions newly available in English and is an invaluable resource to meet the need for multicultural literature.
Dedication To a million Private Bills who have suddenly learnt to call a coat a blouse. Taking things as they find them. Vaguely understanding. Caring less. Grumbling by custom. Cheerful by na�ture. Ever anxious to be where they are not. Ever anxious to be somewhere else when they get there. Without thought of sacrifice. Who have left the flag-waving to those at home. Who serve as a matter of course.
This definitive assessment of Cormac McCarthy’s novels captures the interactions among the literary and mythic elements, the social dynamics of violence, and the natural world in The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, and The Road. Elegantly written and deeply engaged with previous scholarship as well as interviews with the novelist, this study provides a comprehensive introduction to McCarthy’s work while offering an insightful new analysis. Drawing on René Girard’s mimetic theory, mythography, thermodynamics, and information science, Markus Wierschem identifies a literary apocalypse at the center of McCarthy’s work, one that unveils another buried deep within the history, religion, and myths of American and Western culture.
"Dere Mable" by Edward Streeter is a humorous collection of letters written by a naive young soldier during World War I, revealing his comical adventures, romantic escapades, and the challenges of military life. As a bewildered narrator, he takes everything at face value, creatively spells words, and unintentionally uses malapropisms. The book offers a unique rookie's perspective, delivering quick and amusing entertainment.
This selection from the first ten years of the Evergreen Review gives the full flavor of the energy, savvy, excitement, and gall that characterized the magazine during the days of its publication. It also happens to bring together some of the world’s best writers in one volume, in the company of their peers. Evergreen was more than another literary magazine. Founded by Barney Rossett of Grove Press and publishing from 1957 through 1973 (it now exists as an online only magazine), it was the voice of a movement that helped to change the attitudes and prejudices of the culture at large through the language of art—and succeeded. It was always damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Here are original short stories by Samuel Beckett and Jack Kerouac (with his “October in the Railroad Earth” predating the publication of On the Road); Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (previously published only as a pamphlet); a selection from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind; and a passage from Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book. Also included are a fantastic sample of the original and iconic magazine covers which were works of art themselves—a heavily bearded Ginsberg cavorting in a sport coat and Uncle Sam top hat in 1966—and several reprinted comic strips; notably, Michael O’Donoghue’s “The Adventure of Phoebe Zeit-geist.”
Their words provide today's reader with a chance to witness lynching and better understand the current state of race relations in America."--BOOK JACKET.
