Aquifer is from Tim Winton’s collection The Turning. Set in an Australian immigrant suburb, the overlapping stories explore life-shaping events in otherwise ordinary lives. Here, a drop in the aquifer brought about by land clearing and prolonged dry weather drains a nearby swamp. A news story about the discovery of human bones at the water’s edge prompts a middle-aged ex-resident to re-live his childhood and the time when, as the only witness, he calmly stood by and watched a neighborhood bully drown. Themes: change, racial stereotyping, perceptions of time. Change is explored on three levels: personal, community and the environment. More…
Exchanging Glances
This autobiographical story by Christa Wolf provides a unique perspective on the final days of World War II, told from the viewpoint of a middle-aged German woman looking back on her time as a teenager fleeing the Russians with her family. Part of a column of refugees, she recounts being strafed by American fighter planes, learning of Hitler’s death, encountering a retreating Wehrmacht unit, and coming face-to-face with liberated concentration camp survivors. Ironically, some confronting experiences on reaching the “safety” of American lines leave her in tears. Themes: war, the vagaries of memory/selective amnesia, changing perspectives, dislocation, loss, death. More…
A Christmas Story
In this Christmas story from Walter Dean Myers, a shrewd old woman teaches a new police patrolman an important lesson by inviting his family to Christmas dinner. Along with his co-workers, the policeman has a negative view of Harlem (the poor, often violent African American neighborhood in which he works) and doesn’t think it a fit place for a family visit. His wife insists on going, and the visit reveals another side of the community: “regular”, churchgoing families exchanging Christmas greetings on the street and celebrating the holiday together. Themes: Christmas, community, prejudice, understanding, aging gracefully, caring, sharing. More…
The Ghost of Michael Jackson
This story by Ngugi wa Thiong’o satirizes attempts to instill Western & Eastern religious values in post-colonial Kenya. In the process, it lampoons some widely documented scandals of the modern church and the growth of contemporary megachurches with fallen celebrity pastors. A charismatic parish priest flees when a psychic boy reveals some of his vices. His loving flock are so upset by the disappearance that they overlook the boy’s revelations and are overjoyed when the priest mysteriously reappears in the form of a resurrected Michael Jackson. Themes: childhood innocence, the supernatural, superstition, culture clash, religious rivalry, zealotry, hypocrisy. More…
Cap O’ Rushes
Some people liken the beginning of this folktale to Shakespeare’s King Lear. A rich man asks his daughters how much they love him. One answers in a way he does not understand. He mistakenly thinks she doesn’t love him and throws her out of the house. She makes a cloak out of rushes to hide her fine clothes and finds a job cooking and cleaning. That is, of course, until she meets her true love at a ball and turns her bad luck into a ‘happily-ever-after’ ending. Sadly, this sweet-sounding tale may have a more sinister underlying theme. More…