Samira Azzam is best known for her later stories presenting a Palestinian perspective on the violence associated with the creation of Israel. Her lesser-known earlier stories are marked by entertaining descriptions of pre-war Palestinian life and traditions. In Little Things, a lovestruck college student tries but fails to heed her parent’s advice to remain virtuous and “not be like other silly girls”. Themes include reputation, first love, sexuality, self-determination. In Tears for Sale, a professional mourner who doubles as a beautician for brides learns that grief is easier to fake than suffer. Themes include curiosity, death, grief, marriage, virtue. More…
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I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
This story from Harlan Ellison is an example of New Wave Science Fiction, a literary movement that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. Distinguishing features are storylines that are intellectually implausible, and disturbing themes that would not normally be included in traditional science fiction. A sentient supercomputer has destroyed the human race other than five ‘specimens’. With no creative outlet for its powers, it has kept these alive and subjected them to torturous challenges for over one hundred years as revenge against humanity for creating it. Themes: humanity vs. technology, godhood, individualism, revenge, cruelty, violence, misogyny, self-sacrifice More…
Black Tickets
This heavily poetic steam of conscience narrative by Jayne Anne Phillips is not an easy read. Bouncing backwards and forwards in time, a former rapist and now imprisoned drug dealer recalls his obsessive love for and unpredictable, often violent relationship with, his unconventional “boyish” girlfriend. The drugs were pedaled in the seedy movie theatre in which she worked, and it unclear whether she, their “brotherly” hunch-backed supplier, or even the old theatre owner she was “in good with”, set him up. Themes include love, alienation, jealousy, violence, drug dealing and abuse, betrayal. More…
In Another Country
Set during World War 1, the major theme of his story by Ernest Hemingway is courage: courage to face an enemy in war, and courage to try to rebuild one’s life after being badly injured or suffering a major setback. A wounded American, thought to be Hemingway’s alter ego Nick Adams, visits a Milan hospital every day for exercises to rehabilitate a wounded knee. He shares his fears about returning to the front, and his relationship and experiences with five Italian soldiers undergoing treatment. Other themes: dealing with disability and loss, fear of death, camaraderie, dignity vs. bravado, alienation, loneliness. More…
Girl
In this story by Jamaica Kincaid, a mother provides what she believes to be essential ‘life advice’ to her maturing daughter. This ranges from tips for young girls (how to cook, sew, sweep, etc.) to things older girls should know (how to love a man, bring on a miscarriage, etc.). The advice consists of a single sentence of 649 words. The daughter gives only two responses, the first of which the mother ignores. The major theme is motherhood: the mother’s concern that her daughter will become a “slut”. Other themes: coming of age, gender stereotypes, generation gap, appearances. More…