This story by Botswanan writer Bessie Head deals with one of the world’s most terrible crimes. It takes place in Botswana’s “lonely lands” where families usually live a poor but contented life in harmony with nature. Every year, when village headmen proclaim the beginning of the cropping season, farming families relocate from the villages to their ploughing lands. We follow a family who, having endured six years of crippling drought, reach a point in the seventh year where they feel they must make a devastating decision: to all perish from starvation or sacrifice their children to a rain-god. More…
The Bread of Salt
In this coming-of-age story by N. V. M. Gonzalez bread of salt (pan de sal), a popular Filipino food, symbolizes the racial, social and economic divide between a working-class teen with big dreams and the Spanish plantation owner’s niece with whom he is infatuated. Embarrassed when she catches him pilfering delicacies leftover after a banquet, he finally comes to terms with the reality of his position. He throws the delicacies away, and on the way home stops to buy some pan de sal. Themes include family, naivety, unrequited love, social and economic class, shame, disillusionment. More…
A Chip of Glass Ruby
Some people see this Nadine Gordimer story as primarily an anti-apartheid tale. For me, the main theme is exemplified in Yusuf’s “aha moment” when he finally understands why his wife is not like the others. Gordimer shows apartheid for what it is by contrasting those behind it with an extra-ordinary, ordinary woman who doesn’t want anybody to be left out (people without somewhere to live, hungry kids, boys who can’t get educated) and cares enough to put herself at risk by doing something about it. The absence of a denouement in the story suggests that her fight isn’t yet over. More…
A Horse in the Moon
This story by Luigi Pirandello opens with a wedding feast in which guests are concerned for the innocent, vivacious Italian bride. Although wealthy, the Sicilian groom appears physically and mentally ill. After seeing the guests off, the groom tries to hurry his new wife inside. She objects and, while heading towards the nearby village, they come across a dying horse. On seeing his reaction, she realizes the marriage was a mistake. A medical episode and vision he has as the moon rises behind the horse solves the problem for her. Themes include naivety, marriage, madness, suffering, compassion, death, culture clash. More…
The Grandmother
I 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. More…