The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story is a favorite so far among my students in the "Forgotten Books" class I'm teaching this semester. It is set in the South of France in the late 1920s but was written in 1940, long after its author, Glenway Wescott, had left France. My students and I all agreed that it is a beautiful, unjustly forgotten book.…
Last week in my “Forgotten Books” class we read some stories from Kay Boyle’s The White Horses of Vienna and Other Stories. The title story dominated our discussion. (See the end for where to find "The White Horses of Vienna.") It was published in Harper’s magazine in 1935 and won the O. Henry Award for best story that year. Today it’s a rather…
My students and I just read this book in my Forgotten Books class. They weren't thrilled by it, but I thought it was fascinating, a peek into another "lost generation" that the myth of Paris in the 20s has obscured. Their biggest complaint (and mine) is that McAlmon's chapters are a lot of name-dropping and bar-hopping without much introspection. Boyle's chapters, on the…
I had one of those "A-ha" moments in my "Literature of War" class this week (and I don't mean the band). Light bulbs were going off---for me anyway. We've been talking a lot about the stories and histories that have been forgotten or suppressed. This week it started with no one in the class knowing the work of Katherine Anne Porter. That happens…
My class "The Literature of War" has now moved on to WWI. Most of the students freely admitted that they knew almost nothing about it. That's not surprising, considering that even during the recent 100-year commemorations of the war, there was almost no mention of it in the American media. In Europe, the war was front and center in people's minds from 2014…
This week's readings on the experience of the Civil War for African-Americans sparked a lengthy discussion of America's suppressed histories. We read Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, published in 1902, as well as speeches by Frederick Douglass, and a story published in 1864 in Harper's Weekly, “Tippo Saib." We also read two critical articles, one of which explained the long…
It's already February, but it's not too late to start making good on one of my intentions for the new year: to make a record of the course I'm teaching this semester. I have my students write regular discussion starters and reflections about what we are reading and learning, and they really value the experience. By writing down their thoughts, they engage with…
I'm happy to report that the pre-publication reviews of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters have been encouraging. Here is what they are saying: “Rioux’s deeply informed, multifaceted, ardently argued, and mind-expanding celebration of Little Women affirms its pleasures and significance as a tale ripe for reconsideration and recommendation to YA and adult readers across the gender…
Overall, I love what this version does with the character of Jo March. For the first time, Jo's feelings for Laurie are clear, more accurately reflecting Alcott's view of things. In the book, Jo is repeatedly clear that she thinks of him more as a brother, while in the previous films there seemed to be a lot of flirting and mixed messages. Winona…
Last night my Little Women reading group and I met to watch the first episode of the PBS Masterpiece Little Women. It was wonderful to see them (my friends and the March sisters) again. My reading group had meet several times in 2016, while I was writing my book on Little Women, to discuss the novel and its two successors. They had all…