Archive for the ‘Class – Race – Gender’ Category

DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION by Carolyn Cooke

Carolyn Cooke is a master of the short story form—she won the O. Henry Award for her collection, THE BOSTONS. Cooke’s debut novel, Daughters of the Revolution, is also set in New England in the late 60’s, in a town called Cape Wilde.

The epicenter of much of the action, even if might not seem so at first, is the Goode School—a prep school for boys. Principal Goddard Byrd, known simply as “God,” is absolutely against allowing co-education in his school. “Over my dead body” is his constant refrain when asked about it.

June 27, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Contemporary, Debut Novel, Facing History, NE & New York, Reading Guide

THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK by Brando Skyhorse

The silent, overlooked residents of Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood play the starring role in author Brando Skyhorse’s debut, THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK. The novel, really more of a collection of short stories, each narrated by a different character, presents to the reader different facets of both the Mexican and Mexican-American experience in multicultural Los Angeles. Skyhorse, winner of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award for this novel, was born and raised in Echo Park.

June 23, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, California, Class - Race - Gender, Debut Novel, Latin American/Caribbean, PEN/Hemingway Winner, Reading Guide, Short Stories

YOU ARE FREE: STORIES by Danzy Senna

What does it mean to be biracial and free in postmillennial America? The writer James Baldwin is quoted as saying, “Freedom is something that people take and people are as free as they want to be.”

By that definition, do the young interracial women that inhabit Danzy Senna’s first collection of short stories want to be free? Or do they want to belong to a collective… something, larger than themselves? The answer, as one might suspect, is complicated.

June 2, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Short Stories

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SMILING WOMAN by Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble is a well-known English novelist. I have read several of her books and have always enjoyed them. I had no idea that she was also a writer of short stories. A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman is the first compilation of her stories that has ever been published. They are presented in chronological order beginning in 1964 and ending in 2000. Like her novels, these stories often deal with the plight of women in their times, the socio-cultural aspects of marriage, and the difficulties that women find themselves in while trying to both raise a family and be successful in the business world. The stories are distinctively English; the countryside of England as well as the urban landscapes are vivid throughout. There is a span of thirty-six years between the first short story and the last, giving the themes a relatively large period of time in which to develop.

May 26, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Short Stories, United Kingdom, World Lit

THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYLE by Monique Roffey

THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYCLE by Monique Roffey takes an intriguingly different view of the corrosive impact of colonialism. This tale covers fifty years of tumultuous Trinidad history seen through the lives of a married couple–George and Sabine Harwood. The novel begins in 2006–fifty years after the arrival of the Harwoods in Trinidad. They are now in their 70s, and even though they’ve spent more than half a century together, they still, basically, don’t understand each other. Neither do they understand Trinidad.

May 21, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Caribbean, Class - Race - Gender, Facing History, Reading Guide, World Lit

CALEB’S CROSSING by Geraldine Brooks

What becomes of those who independently and courageously navigate the intellectual and cultural shoals that divide cultures? Is it truly possible to make those crossings without relinquishing one’s very identity?

Geraldine Brooks poignantly explores these questions in her latest novel, CALEB’S CROSSING. The story is based on sketchy knowledge of the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk – the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College — and a member of the Wampanoag tribe in what is now Martha’s Vineyard.

May 3, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Class - Race - Gender, Facing History, NE & New York, y Award Winning Author