This poignant story from Doris Lessing deals with the experiences of Julie, a runaway teen in her last year of high school. ‘Accidentally’ impregnated, she runs away from home out of fear of her father’s reaction. She flees to London where Debbie, a compassionate call girl, takes her in and acts as a protector and mother figure. Unfortunately, Debbie is away when the baby comes. Julie carries out a grotesque self-birthing plan and must face the difficult choice regarding the baby’s future alone. Themes include parent-child relationships, innocence vs worldliness, choices and consequences, compassion, desperation, abandonment and regret. More…
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Pomegranate Seed
In this suspenseful mystery by Edith Wharton, a young woman marries a recently widowed man who admits to having been intensely in love with his deceased wife of twelve years. Everything seems perfect until a series of strange letters arrive, addressed to the husband in obviously feminine handwriting. The letters deeply disturb the husband, who refuses to disclose the sender or the contents. When the husband disappears and the secret of the letters is revealed, it appears that his dead wife may have won a ghostly contest. Themes: love, family, jealousy, honesty and mutual trust in marriage, alienation, he supernatural. More…
Footnote to Youth
This story by José García Villa provides a stark warning about the consequences of marrying too young. A seventeen-year-old Filipino boy from a poor farming family insists on marrying his girlfriend. Whatever his reason (love, tradition, desire for independence), neither is happy in the marriage. Amid the daily grind of farm life and the responsibilities of raising a family, both experience disillusionment and regret. Sadly, the cycle begins again when their oldest son turns eighteen. Themes include immaturity, impulsiveness, the romance vs. reality of marriage, lack of fulfilment, disillusionment, regret, the cyclical nature of life. More…
Yellow Moepels
In this story by Herman Bosman, a young a young farmer riding off to fight the British during the short First Boer War promises the girl he is engaged to that he will be home when the moepel fruit are ripe (yellow). The girl visits a native witch-doctor who tells her the same thing. We learned earlier in the story that witch-doctors can only tell you the things that don’t matter in your life. There is something more important in the girl’s future that the witch-doctor neglected to divulge. Themes: love, superstition, war, “bravery”, memory, racism. More…
Islands
Set in the 1970s before the breakup of Yugoslavia, this semi-autobiographical story by Alexsander Hemon describes a Bosnian family’s holiday visit to relatives on a Croatian island. The narrator is a nine-year-old boy indoctrinated in communist ideology. He experiences several traumatic events over the week, the most notable of which is his uncle’s account of the brutal mistreatment and torture of children in Stalin’s prison camps. This shatters his view of the world, and challenges his belief in his own government (the Tito regime). Themes include memory, trauma, loss of innocence, self-awareness and identity, disillusionment, birth, death and futility. More…