Featured Stories

Raymond’s Run

Raymond's Run: Short story by Toni Cade BambaraRaymond’s Run by Toni Cade Bambara is about a feisty school girl nick-named ‘Squeaky’ who helps take care of Raymond, her mentally challenged older brother. Squeaky is a very talented runner. She trains hard and desperately wants to win this years’ May Day race to show up an annoying and over-confidant new girl in town. During the race she sees Raymond running along the outside of the track keeping pace with her. She suddenly decides that winning races doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Themes: responsibility (care-giving), identity, independence, alienation, pride, rivalry, personal growth, respect.

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A Simple Heart / Soul

Seventh Grade: Short story by Gary SotoSet in nineteenth century France, this story by Gustav Flaubert portrays the life of an uneducated, simple-minded country girl who lives through fifty years of drudgery as house servant to a “disagreeable” woman who has fallen on hard times. The girl’s story evokes feelings of both admiration and sympathy: Admiration for her loyalty, piety, kindness and failure to give in to despair; Sympathy for her shameless exploitation, history of disappointment and loss, and misery and suffering approaching death. Themes: innocence; duty, faith and virtue; love and compassion; social class; wealth, poverty and exploitation; suffering, loss and death.

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In the Family

In the Family: Short story by María Elena LlanaThis story from Cuban writer María Elena Llana uses a combination of humour and magical realty to highlight the potentially fatal consequences of pride. The victim (Clara), having excelled at university but never bothered to look for work, seems to think her formal education puts her above other family members. One evening, while “holding court” over dinner with her extended family (both living and dead) she learns the error of her ways. The next day she finds herself sitting on the other (dead family’s) side of the table. Themes: pride, acceptance of the unusual, the supernatural.

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The Giving Tree

The Giving Tree: Short story by Shel SilversteinThis short children’s story by Shel Silverstein is about a boy who is friends with a tree. He plays under it when he is young, and re-visits it throughout his life. The tree keeps on giving to the boy until it has nothing left to give. The boy does not give anything back to the tree or even say thank you. Readers are left wondering if the closing line And the tree was happy. could possibly be true. If you think of the story as an allegory about a mother’s unconditional love, you will know the answer.

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Miss Awful

Miss Awful: Short story by Arthur CavanaughArthur Cavanaugh’s Miss Awful is about how a sensitive third-grader (Roger) deals with a substitute school teacher who is the direct opposite of his regular one. While the regular teacher is flexible and empowers the children in her class, the substitute (who Roger nicknames Miss Awful) is an ‘old-style’ strict disciplinarian. The change affects Roger so much that he begins to show signs of depression. His fellow students are also unhappy, and the children decide to play a cruel joke on Miss Awful. As the joke plays out some of them, including Roger, realize they may have seriously misjudged her.

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The Grandmother

The Grandmother: Short story by K. SurangkhanangI should start by saying that, as someone who spent twelve years teaching at a Thai university, this story by K. Surangkhanang is the opposite of my experience of Thai attitudes towards older family members and the aged in general. Rejected by four of her five children, a frail grandmother lives a miserable life. Forced to fend for herself selling dumplings, she walks for hours every day, facing rudeness and disrespect wherever she goes. The devout woman prays for death, hoping for a better life in her next incarnation. Themes include poverty, selfishness and ingratitude, disrespect, dignity, religious devotion.

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Miss Moberly’s Targets

Miss Moberly's Targets: Short story by Maoj DasThe themes of this story by Manoj Das are the eccentricity and sometimes thoughtless honesty of the elderly, and the loneliness of those living alone with no family or loved ones. A spinster living in an Indian home for the affluent aged is proud of her accuracy in throwing morsels to stray dogs on the street below. She has named the dogs after three men she loved and lost and, when friends belittle her achievement, she steals a revolver and decides to shoot them. Fortunately for the dogs, her intentions are misinterpreted and fellow residents come to the rescue.

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In the Tunnel

In the Tunnel: Short story by Mavis GallantThis story from Mavis Gallant deals with the experiences of a Canadian college student “banished” to Europe by her strict father to end an affair with a married professor. While there, she falls prey to a troubled older man who appears practiced in picking up vulnerable young woman and discarding them immediately something happens that is not to his liking. Their time together, living in his “tunnel-like” room in the garden of an eccentric, thoroughly dislikeable British couple, is not what she expected. Themes: amoureuse mal placé (misplaced love), independence, exploitation, betrayal, cruelty, politics, aging, identity.

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