Featured Stories

The Heart of a Monkey

Heart of a Monkey: Swahili folktale from Andrew LangIn this Swahili folktale, a monkey accepts the offer of a ride on a shark’s back to see the wonders under the sea. Once at sea, the monkey learns that the real reason for the trip is that the shark king needs a monkey’s heart to cure an illness. The monkey tricks the shark into returning. He then explains the trick by telling a story about a donkey, a hare, and a lion. One of the animals kills another. The third animal cooks it, but tells the killer there is no heart. Can you match the animals to the outcome?

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The Heavenly Christmas Tree

The Heavenly Christmas Tree: Short story by Fyodor DostoevskyThis famous Christmas story is from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s self-published periodical, Diary of a Writer. A young boy has recently arrived in a big city with his poverty-stricken, dying mother. On Christmas Eve the boy ventures out from their rented hovel in search of food. He is both terrified and intrigued by his experiences as he walks the streets. Hungry and freezing, he shelters behind a woodpile. He feels sudden warmth, and wakes surrounded by other happy children along with his smiling mother around Christ’s Christmas tree. Themes: poverty, isolation, class discrimination (rich vs. poor), inhumanity, suffering and death, Christianity.

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My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn

Seventh Grade: My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn by Sandra CisnerosMany of Sandra Cisneros’s stories are vignettes (narrative descriptions without a plot). This one provides a snapshot of a young girl’s relationship with her friend Lucy. The two girls identify as Chicanos (USA born Mexican-Americans). Cisneros makes extensive use of Chicano dialect and fragmented sentences to create a realistic atmosphere. The narrator’s tone (feisty) is also typical of Chicano youth. The main theme is, of course, friendship. However, a closer read will reveal deeper themes and emotions beneath the narrator’s bravado. These include ‘aloneness’ (the wish for a large, close family like Lucy’s) and envy for Lucy’s freedom and independence.

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A Defenseless Creature

A Defenseless Creature: Short story by Anton ChekhovIn addition to his tales highlighting serious issues such as poverty, class, death and unfulfilled expectations, Anton Chekhov wrote dozens of comic short stories to support himself through medical school. In this story, a persistent, shrew-like woman wears down a sickly banker. The exasperated man finally pays money the woman claims is owing to her husband out of his own pocket, even though the alleged debt has nothing to do with his bank. Despite the woman repeatedly describing herself as such, readers are left wondering if the harried banker is the titular “defenseless creature”. Themes: bureaucracy, communication, desperation, persistence.

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Look at All Those Roses

Look at All Those Roses: Short story by Elizabeth BowenIn this story by Elizabeth Bowen, car trouble on a deserted country road results in a woman spending several unsettling hours with an amazon of a woman and her seemingly psychic, paralyzed daughter. Her partner has walked to a nearby village to get help, and she becomes increasingly anxious. She falls asleep, and is in the middle of a disturbing dream when her partner returns in a taxi and rudely whisks her away. While in the village, he had heard a frightening rumor about the family. Themes include isolation and alienation, insecurity, emptiness, alternative reality (the white circle), rumor.

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The Sniper

The Sniper: Short story by Liam O'FlahertySome argue that civil wars are the worst form of warfare because they can set friend against friend and family against family. This story by Liam O’Flaherty takes place during the Irish Civil War of 1922/23. After an IRA sniper with the cold gleam of the fanatic in his eyes kills an enemy sniper, he goes to see if he knew the man. It is tempting to feel sorry as he turns over the body. That is until you remember the unarmed woman he had just shot in cold blood. Themes include war, divisiveness, duty, survival, isolation, brutality, guilt.

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Thus Were Their Faces

Thus Were Their Faces: Short story by Silvina OcampoIn this surreal, rather abstract story by Silvina Ocampo, a seemingly confused (or perhaps mentally disturbed) narrator describes the bizarre behavior of children at a boarding school. The students begin to act as if they want to become equal, and increasingly lose their individuality. Seemingly directed by a collective consciousness, they strive to look and act the same and develop a strange fascination with wings. In the “miraculous” climax, we learn that all children attending the school share a common characteristic: it is a school for the deaf! Themes include identity, equality, freedom, the supernatural.

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The Dead Past

The Dead Past: Short story by Isaac AsimovIn this story by Isaac Asimov a young physicist, indignant at apparent government suppression of research in a fringe area of science, secretly builds a home “chronoscope” that can look back in time up to one hundred and fifty years. Too late, the government learns of this and tries to censor his work, pointing out the potential for his machine to destroy an important aspect of life everyone takes for granted. Themes include scientific curiosity and freedom, government disinformation and control (in this case for the greater good), privacy, guilt.

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