Fiction and History
A Reading and Discussion Seminar for Educators
American Families: Stories from Many Perspectives
We will explore varieties of domestic life in America in the years leading up to and into the twenty-first century. The four books chosen for this year’s program examine the culture of the domestic—how lives and families live and work—from a number of perspectives. They provide a counterpoint to the four novels chosen last year which were all written by white male authors.
Generous support from the Missouri Humanities Council allows us to continue to offer the program at a substantial saving from the cost for previous years, and we are very grateful for their continued assistance.
October 26, 2011, 4-6 p.m.
The Street
Ann Petry, 1946
The novel tells the story of a young black mother who struggles to raise her son amid the poverty, violence, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. It is a picture of society that last year’s novels did not touch.
December 14, 2011, 4-6 p.m.
Wise Blood
Flannery O’Connor, 1952
This is the story of Hazel Motes who, after years of military service, returns to find his family home in ruins and the members of his family dead or missing. Like many of Flannery O’Connor’s characters, he struggles to find religion in a modern world and works to build a noble life in an ignoble world.
February 15, 2012, 4-6 p.m.
The Optimist’s Daughter
Eudora Welty, 1969
A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel described as a miracle of compression in which a widow, still mourning the death of her husband in WWII, must confront the new wife of her dying father. These two women clash as cultures clash in this second half of the twentieth century.
April 18, 2012, 4-6 p.m.
A Plague of Doves
Louise Erdrich, 2009
For the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, we read and discuss a Pulitzer finalist for last year by Louise Erdrich. As she has done before, Erdrich poetically describes Midwestern life and the jostling of cultures, Native and European. The present is haunted by the past, so history informs lives even into the twenty-first century. The characters (and all of us) never escape ourselves, our history.
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For more information,contact Sheila Onuska at sonuska@csd.org or 314-692-1208
Register early to save your seat at these thought provoking and entertaining discussions.
Teaching China and Japan
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