Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Warm and Please Help: Suggest a Short Story

Last night was the first night in two weeks that I did not have to sleep with all of my clothes, a hat, and a scarf.  I am back on the heated side of the Yangtze River in Xian and will be heading back to site tomorrow to get started lesson planning for a short story class that has no textbook. 
 
The theme of the class will be human behavior.  How does culture influence human behavior and how does culture influence how we understand stories?  How much of human behavior is universal versus cultural?  We will read stories starting with the beginning of life proceeding through the life cycle ending with old age.  If you have any stories that you think will be interesting for my Chinese students and that are in the free domain please send me a link.  Thanks!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey there. Now I know who Jennifer from Eastern Gansu is. Cool.
David Sedaris' short stories are kind of awesome.
And Paul Auster has a few. I studied Auggie Wren's Christmas Story in English class in high school (second year). And it was adapted in "Smoke"
here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4244994
by the way your blog is great. Honest and self reflected. I love that.
Good luck for this semester and hit me up if you have some French question !
Mathilde (from Lanzhou)
ps: i ended up not showing Milk. how did it go in Caitlin's class?
most shocking for them (but best discussion) were: Harold and Maude and Grease. Mad Hot Ballroom was a hit.
anyway, was cool to meet you at IST, the Tree House is super inspiring stuff.

universalibrarian said...

Hello again, Hope I am not bothering you too much. enjoying your blog especially the insights about life in China. :) I am really enjoying Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence right now. Old and dead so free to use. Don't know how hard they would be to read. Mostly simple vocab but a few period words sprinkled through.
:)

http://www.online-literature.com/dh_lawrence/

http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/short-stories-by-katherine-mansfield/