A Pair of Silk Stockings

A Pair of Silk Stockings: Short story by Kate ChopinIn this story by Kate Chopin, an impoverished mother comes into a windfall of fifteen dollars and excitedly plans how to spend it on clothes for her children so they look fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives. Later, at a department store, her hand rests on a discounted pair of silk stockings and their luxurious feel awakens something in her. She abandons her plans for children’s clothes, buys the stockings and goes on a self-indulgent spending spree for the rest of the day. Themes include poverty, social class, self-sacrifice vs. self-indulgence, selfhood, consumerism, impulse buying.

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Sealed Off

Sealed Off: Short story by Eileen ChangSet in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War, this story by Eileen Chang takes place in a stalled tram during a city-wide military shutdown. An unhappily married accountant sits next to a single university instructor and strikes up a conversation with her. It begins awkwardly but, as they share their frustrations and disappointments with life, a romantic bond develops. The connection breaks when the man changes seats as the tram begins to move, and both return to their previous unfulfilling routines. Themes include social class, tradition (gender dynamics), urban loneliness and monotony, escape, love vs. the attractiveness of change.

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The Sentinel

The Sentinel: Short story by Arthur C. ClarkeIn this story by Arthur C. Clarke, a scientist exploring the moon’s surface discovers a “glittering roughly pyramidal structure” high on a mountain top. It is clearly not man-made, and is surrounded by a force-field that takes twenty years and “atomic power” to penetrate. The scientist concludes that it was placed there as a beacon to alert an advanced alien civilization when life on Earth has evolved and proved worthy enough for them to be interested in revisiting. This begs a question: what are their intentions? Themes include isolation, exploration, discovery, evolution, worthiness, the cosmic insignificance of man.

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The Lovers

The Lovers: Short story by Bessie HeadThis story by Bessie Head is a reimagining of a Botswanan oral folktale in which young lovers who defy tribal customs of premarital chastity and arranged marriage are cast out of their village and mysteriously vanish. This leads to a myth that as punishment for putting the tribal community at risk, a nearby hill opened and swallowed them. The folktale’s message is that a tribe’s well-being relies on members putting personal desires aside and strictly following its traditions and rules. Themes include romantic love vs. arranged marriage, individual choice vs. compliance with cultural traditions, defiance, isolation, punishment.

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The Souvenir Museum

The Souvenir Museum: Short story by Elizabeth McCrackenIn this story by Elizabeth McCracken, a ten-year-old boy treated to a Danish holiday, including a visit to Legoland, is unaware that his divorced mother’s real motive for the trip is to reconnect with an ex-partner under the guise of delivering a watch her late father had bequeathed him. Every aspect of the trip is a disappointment as she grapples with her son’s growing intellectual independence and an awkward reunion that fails to give her the closure she was looking for. Themes include grief, memories, lost love, unmet expectations, objects as connections to the past, coping with coming of age.

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A Scrap of Time

A Scrap of Time: Short story by Ida FinkOver the years we have published several “holocaust” stories by Ida Fink. This is the title story of the book from which they came. A woman who had watched as men from her Polish village were rounded up and ostensibly taken away to labor camps reflects that, for those traumatized by war or disaster, time is not measured in months and years but by actions and events. Sadly, there are far too many people in the world today forced to measure time in the same way. Themes include childhood innocence, fear, deception, self-delusion, atrocity.

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Medicine

Medicine: Short story by Lu XunIn this story by Lu Xun two women grieve either side of a path that divides a Chinese cemetery. On one side, a mother places offerings over the grave of her adult son who had recently been executed as a revolutionary. On the other, a mother does the same over the grave of her young son. Unknowingly, the two share a gruesome connection. The boy had died of consumption (tuberculosis) despite consuming a “guaranteed” Chinese folk cure… a steamed bun dipped in the blood of an executed prisoner! Themes include despair, superstition, cannibalism, grief, courage, political change, hope.

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Jim Baker’s Blue Jay Yarn

Jim Baker's Blue Jay Yarn: Short story by Mark TwainIn this story by Mark Twain, a man who says he can understand the language of animals relates a tall tale about a misguided but determined blue jay that accidentally drops an acorn into a knothole in the roof of a derelict house. When he looks through the hole and can’t see the acorn, he decides to fill it. The bird’s diligent but futile efforts attract thousands of other jays which stand idly by and, when the truth of the “endless hole” is finally revealed, mock him for his foolishness. Themes include language, folly, obsession, misguided persistence, social behavior.

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