Colors

An Abundance of Katherines—John Green
Born Confused—Tanuja Desai Hidier
Copper Sun—Sharon Draper
Ender’s Game—Orson Card
Feed–M.T. Anderson
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence— Doris Pilkington
Into The Wild—Jon Krakauer
My Sister’s Keeper—Jodi Picoult
Never Let Me Go—Kazu Ishiguru
Obasan—Joy Kogawa
Riding the Bus with My Sister— Rachel Simon
Shattering Glass—Gail Giles
Slam—Walter Dean Myers
Song of Solomon—Toni Morrison
The Color of Water––James McBride
The Count of Monte Cristo— Alexandre Dumas
The Life of Pi—Yann Martel
The Namesake—Jhumpa Lahiri

Never let me go - AMAZING kazuo ishiguro blows my mind…
Life of Pi - equally really funny and also a very serious story. LOVE it.

jodie picoult is a terrible writer in my opinion she just churns out teen trash.

From the novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa, I found this paradox,
"We are both the enemy and not the enemy."

Background;
Basically Naomi is half Japanese/Canadian, though she was born and raised in Canada. She is suffering from all the racism going on, even though she considered herself Canadian [After Japan bombed Canada] now she is unsure. Her whole life she has dealt with the racism and doesnt know what to consider herself. She is very shy and unsure. She is seen as a traitor in her own land.

Anyway here is what I wrote about it, and I don’t know how to expand!
"Being both the enemy and not the enemy is a paradox. Because of Naomi’s mixed culture, her Japanese heritage and image makes her an enemy in her own land, even though she was born and raised in Canada."

I want to have one more sentence or improve this one. Is there anything else analytical I could add?

Please And Thank You<3

good question

I’m taking AP Literature next year and I have to read 4 books for summer reading. I have to choose one thematic unit from the list and read the books below it. Below is listed a few units with the four books to read under it also listed is the author. Which unit should I chose and why?

1. Diaspora and Alienation in Asian Literature
a. Obasan, Joy Kogawa
b. The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan
c. Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson
d. The Tiger’s Daughter, Bharati Mukherjee

2. Dissent, oppression, and detachment in the Middle East
a. Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salmon Rushdie
b. The Plague, Albert Camus
c. A Happy Death, Albert Camus
d. Children of the Alley: A Novel, Naguib Mahfouz

3. The Feminism Schism
a. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
b. A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
c. Fasting/Feasting, Anita Desai
d. Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

4. Metafiction
a. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
b. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
c. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
d. For Whom the Bells Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

5. Franz Kafka (the author of the 4 books listed)
a. The Trial
b. Metamorphosis
c. The Castle
d. Amerika

Either #3 or #4 simply because these contain the best books in my opinion. They are truly awesome and will be good reads for over the summer. Jane Eyre is amazing but so is A Farewell to Arms. Definitely one of those two will serve you best.

The books I need are: Drown by Junot Diaz; As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; Obasan by Joy Kogawa; Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir by Terry Galloway; The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

If the authors AGREED that the book is free, they post it on their website, or their publisher’s website. If it is not there, it is NOT LEGAL.

When someone scans a book and posts it online, it steals from the author. The thief can earn jail time and fines of $150,000.

Basically NONE of these authors agreed to give their books for free. So any online copy is theft. The thief can earn jail time and fines of up to $150,000.

Authors are being hurt by book piracy. Here is what one of them says about it.
"I don’t care if you are the nicest person on the planet, foster small kittens in your spare time, and read to the blind. You are still a thief. You are hurting my livelihood and the livelihoods of many of my friends."

Right at the end - "and Deidre whispers to walk faster" - is the place where it shifts back into present

Where there’s a Wall
Joy Kogawa

where there’s a wall
there’s a way
around, over, or through
there’s a gate
maybe a ladder
a door
a sentinel who
sometimes sleeps
there are secret passwords
you can overhear
there are methods of torture
for extracting clues
to maps of underground passageways
there are zepplins
helicopters, rockets, bombs
bettering rams
armies with trumpets
whose all at once blast
shatters the foundations

where there’s a wall
there are words
to whisper by a loose brick
wailing prayers to utter
special codes to tap
birds to carry messages
taped to their feet
there are letters to be written
novels even

on this side of the wall
I am standing staring at the top
lost in the clouds
I hear every sound you make
but cannot see you

I incline in the wrong direction
a voice cries faint as in a dream
from the belly
of the wall

and how can you connect this peom to a real life situation

to me, this poem sounds like it could be interpreted in a few different ways. but it think it could be saying that the wall is really a problem in life. there are many ways of going about it and trying to overcome it, but many paths can force you to make bad decisions (the part where they’re referring to bombs and that stuff).

My teacher recommended this book for me to read for my ISU, I’m on page 34 and so far the book is good, but I’m beginning to get the feeling that this book is made to diss religion. I mean, I get that the Father is a hypocrite and this book is about hypocrisy too, but does this book have ANY characters that are religious and don’t hide things that are bad? Because if this book has any more characters that are religious and hide bad things, I’m sure as hell not reading this.BTW I have to finish reading an ISU book and write an essay on it by Tuesday that is why I’m hesitant on changing the book I’m reading.

I think it is

The poem was first published in 1973. http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/60th/37kogawaindex.shtml
http://www.answers.com/topic/obasan-novel-9

I need to choose a fiction book from the list given to us by next year’s teacher.

NOTE: We need to choose a novel in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character’s alienation reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions and moral values.

Here’s the list of authors we’re able to pick from.

Chinua Achebe
Kingsley Amis
Rudolfo Anaya
Margaret Atwood
Jane Austen
James Baldwin
Saul Bellow
Charlotte Bronte
Emily Bronte
Raymond Carver
Willa Cather
Sandra Cisneros
John Cheever
Kate Chopin
Colette
Joseph Conrad
Stephen Crane
Anita Desai
Charles Dickens
George Elliot
Ralph Ellison
Louise Erdrick
William Faulkner
Henry Fielding
F. Scott Fitzgeral
Ford Madox Ford
E. M. Forster
Thomas Hardy
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ernest Hemingway
Zora Neale Hurston
Kazuo Ishiguro
Henry James
James Joyce
Maxine Hong Kingston
Joy Kogawa
Margaret Laurence
D. H. Lawrence
Bernard Malamud
Katherine Mansfield
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bobbie Ann Mason
Carson McCullers
Herman Melville
Toni Morrison
Bharati Mukherjee
Vladimir Nabokov
Flannery O’ Connor
Cynthia Ozick
Katherine Anne Porter
Jean Rhys
Jonathan Swift
Leo Tolstoy
Mark Twain
John Updike [lolololol]
Luisa Valenzuela
Alice Walker
Evelyn Waugh
Eudora Welty
Edith Wharton
John Edgar Widerman
Virginia Woolf
Richard Wright
I was thinking about reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
Any good suggestions?

The problem with Gatsby is that he is a rather distant figure in the novel. It’s told through the viewpoint of another character, plus alienation isn’t a major theme of the novel.

Ralph Ellison - The Invisible Man - if you are looking for alienation from society, this is it in black and white (literally).
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Ubervilles. A clear case of a charcter being ostracized from society and actually ostracizing herself due to moral values.
Carson McCullers - Heart is a Lonely Hunter. You can pick one of the many characters who are lonely and alienated - the tomboy, the deaf/mute gay guy, the doctor, etc.

I have a list of books that I can choose from for my outside source reading - I am looking for a book that has between 100-200 pages (or less) and is a good book.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (83, 99, 03, 05, 09)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (80, 85, 04, 05, 06, 09, 10)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (87, 09)
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw (79, 96, 04, 07, 09)
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (81)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (03, 06)
Master Harold…and the Boys by Athol Fugard (03, 08, 09)
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (94, 99, 00, 02, 07, 10)
M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang (95)
Medea by Euripides (82, 92, 95, 01, 03)
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (97, 08)
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (09)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (85, 91, 95, 02, 03)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (78, 89)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (95, 04, 05, 07)
Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul (06)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (06)
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (90, 92, 04)
The Misanthrope by Moliere (08)
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (89)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 94, 96, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 09)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (76, 77, 86, 87, 95, 09)
Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao (00, 03)
The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie (07)
Mother Courage and Her Children by Berthold Brecht (85, 87, 06)
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (94, 97, 04, 05, 07)
Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw (87, 90, 95, 02, 09)
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (97)
Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot (76, 80, 85, 95, 07)
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning (85)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (03, 08, 10)
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (03)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (09, 10)
Native Son by Richard Wright (79, 82, 85, 87, 95, 01, 04, 09)
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (99, 03, 05, 07, 08)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (09, 10)
1984 by George Orwell (87, 94, 05, 09)
No Exit by John Paul Sartre (86)
No-No Boy by John Okada (95)
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevski (89)
Obasan by Joy Kogawa (94, 95, 04, 05, 06, 07, 10)
The Octopus by Frank Norris (09)
The Odyssey by Homer (86, 06, 10)
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (77, 85, 88, 00, 03, 04)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (01)
Old School by Tobia Wolff (08)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (09)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (05, 10)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (89, 04)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (01)
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (06)
The Optimist’s Daughter by D. H. Lawrence (94)
The Orestia by Aeschylus (90)
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf (04)
Othello by William Shakespeare (79, 85, 88, 92, 95, 03. 04, 07)
The Other by Thomas Tryon (10)
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (90)
Our Town by Thornton Wilder (86, 97, 09)
Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen (06)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (01)
Pamela by Samuel Richardson (86)
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (71, 77, 78, 88, 91, 92, 07, 09)
Paradise Lost by John Milton (85, 86, 10)
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (06)
Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac (02)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (90, 05, 07)
Phaedre by Jean Racine (92, 03)
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson (96, 99, 07, 08, 10)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (02)
The Plague by Albert Camus (02, 09)
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (97)
Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal (02, 08)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (10)
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James ( 88, 92, 96, 03, 05, 07)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (76, 77, 80, 86, 88, 96, 99, 04, 05, 08, 09, 10)
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (95)
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (96)
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (09)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (83, 88, 92, 97, 08)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (90, 08)
Push by Sapphire (07)
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (03, 05, 08)

i’ve only read a few and heard of a few.

never read monkey bridge but sounds interesting (since i’m vietnamese american just like the author…) it’s natural though since people want to learn more about their background and similar things they went too. so only choose that if you can relate and if you find it interesting.

Moby Dick is good. it’s a classic books so you can find lots of notes on google.

M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang (95) !!!! recently read book. i would choose that out of all the other ones i’ve read. it’s based on real life events of Bernard Bouriscot. rather creepy. it’s a good read. it’s a play so it reads really fast. you can analyze it. it switches gender role. helps you think about gender and race.

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. good. but kinda hard to analyze. my teacher analyzed it for the class. lol

STAY AWAY from The Odyessy (sp?) my sis read it . really long. boring. it’s in poem format i believe. but it gets tiring after a whiel

Of Mice and Men. nvr read it but lots of people said it was good and interesting.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dicken. LOVE! it’s about an orphan boy and he discovers long-lost relatives and who his real mother is. rather touching. but the front cover annoyed me. i recommend it as 2nd choice after M. Butterfly

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (89, 04)–> my friend said it was good. and another friend said she wants to read it. but they’re the intellectual type

one flew over the……… well i heard it has lots of bad words in it and it can be confusing (nvr read it though) but all my friends who read it said it was good.

Pride and Prejudice………..um i read it a few years back. couple of pages. never finished. but my other friend eagerly devoured the book! she was immersed in it! so you can choose that. it’s a classic and well known book.

my pick? i would recommend M. Butterfly and/or Oliver Twist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i don’t think m butterf…. is all that long . less than 100 pgs. at least the one i got is less than 100 pgs