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Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks:

When her Egyptian translator unexpectedly adopted the Islamic veil, Brooks, a Middle East reporter for The Wall Street Journal, set out to explore what she perceived as a restrictive religious lifestyle. Discover with her the breadth of experiences of Muslim women in ten different Arabic countries, including doctors, soldiers and chador-clad wives and mothers.

The Hundred Secret Senses:

This story involves a Chinese-American woman (Olivia) and her uneasy relationship with her Chinese sister (Kwan), who speaks to ghosts. Their eventual journey to China lays some of those ghosts to rest, but forces Olivia to re-examine her own life and marriage.

When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals by J. Moussaief Masson:

A compilation of tales, gathered from extensive research of scientific literature, which suggest that animals do have rich emotional lives.

Davita's Harp by Chaim Potok:

Davita is the eight year-old daughter of a Jewish mother and Christian father, both non-practicing, both irrevocably tied to the tenets of their religious upbringing. As she grows to adulthood, she experiments with both faiths. She eventually embraces Orthodox Judaism, but discovers its limits as well as its rewards.

Moving Violations by John Hockenberry:

A lively, aggressive and intelligent biography of the paraplegic reporter. The anecdotes are hilarious, furious and gossipy, and Hockenberry reveals the fear and ignorance underlying discrimination against the disabled in America.

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride:

Sensitive and wry, McBride's reminiscence of growing up in a Queens family of twelve half-black, half-white kids combines his own story with his Jewish mother's story. His mother, born Ruchel Zylska in Poland, escaped a miserable childhood by moving to New York and eventually marrying a black musician, Andrew McBride, who "could make a dog laugh."

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert:

Madame Bovary is a classic because it speaks of the willfulness and blindness of the human heart in any place or time. Emma Bovary, unwilling or unable to find happiness in her marriage to an aging doctor, becomes involved in not one but two affairs. In the end she finds herself facing a tragic dilemma, torn between losing her lover and confessing to her husband.

The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd:

This compelling novel, written in the form of letters to her family in Scotland, is the story of a vital young woman who comes to China to marry a British diplomat in 1903. Her stifling, practically house-bound existence soon finds her scandalizing the European community by having an affair with a handsome young Japanese aristocrat. Cast off by her husband, she finds an unsuspected freedom in her rigorous, solitary new life.

A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr:

This true story reads like a legal thriller, but adds depth and poignancy with its tragic beginning, as a small Massachusetts town discovers that the loss of several children to leukemia is no coincidence. Ultimately, eight families took W. Grace and Beatrice Foods to the mat in a nine--year--long court battle for justice (and bitter recompense) for the families of Woburn.

The Hundred Secret Senses
by Amy Tan

Discussion Questions

Note: I think much of the discussion of this novel may be self-inflected: that is, how we might have reacted in similar situations, what our feelings are about our families and our own history. If you think about the novel that way, you may also want to think about how the author presents these relationships. Does she want us to fill in the blanks based on our own experiences? Or does she want us to view the characters as interested outsiders?

1. Do you think Kwan is "crazy"? How do we distinguish between mental illness and eccentricity? Are Americans less tolerant of odd behavior than other cultures?

2. Why would Kwan share her stories, her past lives, with a seven year old child? What need was she trying to meet by befriending (and inadvertently terrifying) Olivia? Olivia says (page 358) that she's always known the reason.

3. There are two narrative lines in the story: Olivia's life, with and without Kwan, and Kwan's telling of her past life with the missionary woman, Miss Banner. Do you think one story is more important than the other? What is the purpose of the historical narrative? How do they come together at the close of the novel?

4. Do you think the male characters are as well developed as the female characters? What is Simon's role in the novel? Why does his past relationship (with Elza) seem so more important than Olivia's past relationships?

5. Do you think Olivia makes it impossible for her to be happy? Or does her family history make it impossible for her to know what would make her happy? How much responsibility should we take for our own happiness?

6. Did you think this was a difficult read? Why? How could the author have made it easier? How was it rewarding to the reader?

7. There is a magical or spiritual world, and a practical, realistic world in this novel. Do you think the author integrates them smoothly? Do you think this book is an example of magical realism, where the unexplained coexists with the commonplace?

8. How does the ending work for you? Why does the author have Kwan disappear?

9. How does the journey to China enable Olivia to finally believe or find value in Kwan's stories of the Yin World? Does it matter that she can't ask Big Ma for the truth behind Kwan's stories?

Some other Asian-American writers you may enjoy:

Gus Lee --China Boy, Honor and Duty, Tiger Tail
Cynthia Kadohata-- Floating World
Fae Myenne --Ng Bone
Meg Pei--Salaryman
Gish Jen --Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land

Davita's Harp
by Chaim Potok

Author Biography

Chaim Potok was born Herman Harold Potok, February 17, 1929, in New York City, and changed his first name to Chaim when he was an adult. He was educated at Yeshiva University, B.A. (summa cum laude), received his Master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. From the University of Pennsylvania.

Chaim Potok is both an established (and best-selling) novelist, accomplished painter, historian, and an ordained rabbi and scholar of Judaic texts, serving as a U.S. Chaplain in the Korean War in 1956-57. Potok's attempts to reconcile these apparently divergent commitments has occasionally resulted in frustration, yet he uses this to his advantage in his novels. As he comments to Elizabeth Duff in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "While this tension is exhausting . . . it is fuel for me. Without it, I would have nothing to say." Although he was raised in an Orthodox family, he was drawn to Conservative Judaism and eventually was ordained in that faith.

His interest in writing led him into conflict with his family and his teachers. His mother suggested that he "be a brain surgeon . . . and on the side write stories." His instructors expressed their disappointment that he would abandon full time study of the Talmud to read and write fiction. This conflict between secular and scholarly demands is a recurring theme in Potok's novels.

Potok's comments on the novel (with thanks to William A. Allen's Chaim Potok page):

Davita's Harp is a confrontation between two fundamentalisms I would say. The secular fundamentalism represented by Marxism, Stalinism, and communism, and the religious fundamentalism of the extreme right in my own tradition, and how those two fundamentalisms deeply hurt individuals profoundly committed to them, and what those individuals do in the wake of that pain.

To me these are profoundly rich confrontations. As we go about trying to fuse these cultures together, very often, gold is created. We are all of us made richer as a result. I don't advocate this kind of confrontation. I don't have to advocate it. We live these confrontations all the time. I'm only trying to understand them and to track them and to explore the possibilities of resolution that might come from them. I know there are other kinds of confrontations that we experience, more than confrontations from the hearts of cultures.

I'm writing about people caught up in some of the central events of our century. How does one hold onto one's own world, a world one deeply loves, while navigating the wider world beyond our own? In one way or another, whether through ourselves, our children, our friends, or our relatives, it's a problem all of us confront sooner or later. That's the problem, the human adventure that constitutes the heart of the stories I write. "

Chaim Potok lecture, March 20, 1986
Southern College of Seventh-Day Adventists
Collegedale, Tennessee U.S.A.
Edited by Dr. Jerry Gladson

Thoughts for discussion:

1.Why does Potok choose a child to tell this story?

2.Was this period of American history a more innocent time? What effect do you think the atomic bomb had on this kind of idealism?

3.Do you think parents have a responsibility to provide some kind of faith or religion for their children? What about Davita's Jewish background as a cultural heritage? Were they wrong to keep that from her?

4.Do you think children are more "spiritual" than adults? Why?

5.Why is saying the Kaddish for her father so important for Davita? How does the congregation support her in this?

6.At what point does the relationship between Davita and her mother change so that the child becomes the parent and vice versa?

7.How do Jacob Daw's stories influence Davita? What do you think Potok is saying about the line between truth and fiction? What is the difference between reading scripture as literature and reading it as the word of God?

8.How does Davita's loss of the Akiva award compare and relate to Channa's reaction to the Soviet alliance with the Fascists?

9.What does the door harp symbolize to the characters, and to the reader? How do these meanings alter throughout the story? What does it's being moved to the door of Davita's room mean?

10.On page 273, Channa says she feels the Communist party's effect on American life. What else might be responsible for those changes?

11.On page 288, Davita weeps for her father, wishing for once he had not done the decent thing. Do you think he would have behaved differently had he know the outcome of this selfless act?

12.When Jakob Daw says it is wrong to face the world with closed eyes, do you think he means anyone in particular? Channa? Himself?

13.When is religion (or faith) a comfort? When is it a drug?

14.Davita has tried to reconcile all her pasts: her mother's pain, her father's rejection of his family, and the new "past" of Jewish heritage she embraces. Can we do this for ourselves, or do we have to give up some part of our own history?

15.Were the Chantals "good" parents to Davita?

The Color of Water
by James McBride

The Author in Brief

James McBride, born in Brooklyn in 1959, is the son of a black minister and a Polish Jew who until very recently refused to admit that she was a white woman. A journalist and musician, he has written for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and People magazine. He ahs composed songs for jazz greats such as Anita Baker and won several awards for his musical theater work. Married, with two children, he currently lives in South Nyack, New York.

Discussion Questions

1. Which is more interesting to you, McBride's story or his mother's?

2. How does this biography illustrate the bridging of the gap between black and white? How does it demonstrate irreconcilable differences?

3. Why do you think Ruth refuses to reveal her past to her children? What effect did that have on the family?

4. How did her children try to understand their unusual (at the time) parents? Does every child at some time think their parents are eccentric or "different?"

5. How do you think Ruth reconciled her often contradictory beliefs about the races to herself and her children?

6. Regarding her stance against welfare, do you think her children suffered in the face of her pride?

7. How would her life be easier or more difficult in today's society?

8. Do you think the whirlwind feeling of their home life was the result of Ruth's over compensating, or trying to divert their attention from her "whiteness?"

9. Was Ruth genuinely eccentric? Would her behavior have been less noticeable if she had been black?

10. Do you think she married the second time for love? What lessons did McBride's parents teach him about love and marriage?

Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert

The Author in Brief

-- The only truth in this world exists in a well-made sentence. --

Gustave Flaubert was born in 1821 in Rouen, France and died in 1880. He was the fourth child of a distinguished doctor who was the head of the Rouen hospital. His family lived on the hospital grounds, and Flaubert, a sensitive and quiet child, read a great deal and absorbed a large (if informal) education in scientific techniques and concepts. He attended school in Rouen and in 1841 was sent, against his will, to study law in Paris. Although he disliked his studies, Parisian intellectual society quickly drew him in and nourished his literary pursuits.

In 1844 Flaubert suffered a nervous illness, the nature of which is not precisely known, but is generally thought to have been seizures of some kind. Ill health was the perfect excuse for Flaubert to retire from law to his family's new home and write full time. His fatigue and sensitivity extended to his work, and he claimed that "La Bovary's poisoning made me throw up in my chamber pot." Madame Bovary was his first novel, and created an uproar in France immediately. In 1857 he and his publisher were taken to court for an "outrage to public morals and religion," although the case was eventually acquitted.

Family finances spared Flaubert any real concern with making a living with his pen, which is fortunate as his novels earned him almost no money (Madame Bovary earned only 500 francs in the first five years). He never married and had few close friends, living a reclusive life and maintaining relationships primarily through letters. For many years he carried on such a platonic and idealized "romance' with an olde, rmarried woman he had met at fifteen, and also a slightly more carnal relationship with the poet Louise Colet. Even she Flaubert saw only rarely, finding he loved her ideal self more than the real Louise.

Flaubert wrote three more novels and two collections of stories, but Madame Bovary is considered by critics to be his finest work. He died in 1881.

Discussion Questions

1.Why did Flaubert choose to write about such flawed characters? Did you find the novel without hope? Are you sympathetic to any of the characters?

2.What would it take to make Emma happy? Why does she fail to find happiness? Would changes in society or the lives of women in general make a difference?

3.How do Emma's relationships with Charles Rodolphe and Leon differ? Does each man provide some necessary element in her life? Why exactly does she become so ill when Rodolphe betrays her?

4.How does religion influence these characters' lives?

5.Why does Flaubert make Charles the "bookends" of the novel, leaving Emma's story at the center? Do we only see Emma through his eyes?

6.How do their parents' marriages influence Charles and Emma in their choice of spouses?

7.Do you think this is a "psychological" novel (a character study), or is the plot complex and interesting enough on its own?

8.Do you think individual characters represent specific aspects of society? Is there any hint of the world outside France and their villages, or are their lives completely provincial?

9.How do Emma and Leon both delude themselves about their affair?

10.Does Emma compromise her integrity in every way, or is there some principle on which she stands firm?

The Ginger Tree
by Oswald Wynd

Author Biography

Oswald Wynd was born July 4, 1913 in Tokyo, Japan, the son of Scottish missionaries William and Anna Wynd. He lived in Japan for the first eighteen years of his life, returning to Scotland to attend the University of Edinburgh for a four year degree. When World War II began he entered the British Army, becoming a member of the British Intelligence Corps for six years, during which time he was held as a Japanese prisoner of war. He says that was when he began to write "seriously," but in addition to novels under his own name, he has written more than a dozen suspense novels as Gavin Black, most set in the Orient.

Thoughts for Discussion

Plot: Does the action in the book have a noticeable rhythm? Are the slow parts too slow, the brisk parts too fast? Do the events ever feel too predictable, or the reverse -- too unlikely?

Plot tends to rely on conflict between characters, or between the main character and an event or idea. Can you identify different areas of conflict within the novel? Are these conflicts resolved?

Is the ending satisfying? How would you have changed it? What does the author do to "close" the story, to bring resolution to these events?

Character: Are all the characters well-developed? If any characters seem "flat," why do you think the author wrote them that way? Do the characters' actions seem believable? Do we understand their motives? Is it important to always understand why a character does something?

Do any of the other female characters reflect or resemble Mary at different stages in her life? For example, does she grow to resemble the Japanese Baroness (Aiko) by the end of the novel?

How successful is the author in writing in a woman's thoughts? How do you think he came up with Mary's "voice?" How does this voice change throughout the novel? How different would the book be if Mary was writing looking back at all these events?

Point of View: We see all events through Mary Mackenzie's eyes. How does this affect your reading and enjoyment of the novel? Is it frustrating to not know others' thoughts and feelings, or does this focus your attention on Mary?

Style and Tone: How would you describe the writer's style (forceful, cool, elegant, terse, etc.)? How does this affect the events and surroundings he is describing? What does the time period demand in terms of language and phrasing?

How did you feel about what the writer doesn't say -- sexual encounters, for example. Why does the author detail the ugliness of Richard's denouncement of Mary without balancing it with a positive encounter between Mary and Kentaro? How would you describe the overall emotional feel of the novel?

Do you ever feel the author is trying to make you feel something--is being obvious about wringing your heart? What about Mary's final encounter with Tomo as she leaves Japan?

A Civil Action

by Jonathan Harr

Discussion Questions

1. Who is the hero of this book? Who is the villain? Why do you think so?

2. How do individuals show personal integrity in this book? Are there people you thought were honest but were proved otherwise?

3. Can you understand Anne Anderson's decision not to go to Toronto with her husband? What about the dangers to the rest of her family in remaining in Woburn?

4. During the jury selection Facher says, "I think it's very difficult for any woman with small children to decide the case on the evidence rather than emotion" [p. 282]. Do you agree with him? Do you think he is correct in saying that a father with young children might not find it so difficult?

5. Do you think our country's method of jury selection is fair in general? How does it fail in particular cases? Is it enough that it works most of the time?

6. How important is money in winning a suit? How does the legal system try to give equality to the poor before the law?

7. What is Schlichtmann's chief obligation to the families he represents? Does he ever lose sight of those obligations? Did you think he was both fair and honest with the families?

8. Judge Skinner believes that the primary motivation in lawsuits over the death of children is "an overwhelming sense of personal guilt." It is not so much the money the families are after, he thinks, as "to have it said clearly that this wasn't their fault" [p. 273]. Is this an accurate description of the Woburn parents' motivations?

9. Were you surprised at how much leeway the judge had in making decisions? How do you think he was influenced by his personal feelings about Facher, Schlichtmann and the other lawyers?

10. Do you think the jury understood all the details of the case? Are members of the jury encouraged in any way to ask for clarification of complicated evidence?

11. Does the final outcome of the trial represent victory for the Woburn families or for Grace and Beatrice? Why?

12. Schlichtmann says that he believes that he has devoted nine years to the Woburn case out of "pride, greed, ambition" [p. 491]. Do you think he is being accurate or modest?

13. Has reading A Civil Action changed your ideas about the American judiciary system, and, if so, in what way?

www.webrary.org/RS/TOL97.html
First published on the Web: 1/26/1998
Last updated: 6/18/2002