Instructor: Professor Emma Gorst
Time and venue: The second Wednesday of the month in the evening from 7:30-9 P.M. on Zoom
For details, the latest schedule, and Zoom link, please visit: Reading for Culture with Emma: the Western Literature Book Club @eAWLC 2022.
Please come back to check this page often as we will keep updating the reading materials and podcasts.
The reading for November 9:
Bloodletting and other cures by Vincent Lam
The assigned pages for the next discussion are below. Please click to download them.
The reading for December 7:
What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
The assigned pages for the next discussion are below. Please click to download them.
The reading for September 14:
‘Tis by Frank McCourt – American, 1999
The assigned pages for the next discussion are below. Please click to download them.
The reading for July 13:
How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa – Canadian, 2020
The assigned pages for the next discussion are below. Please click to download them.
How to Pronounce Knife _ Souvankham Thammavongsa _ Granta
The reading for June 8:
Northern Wild by David R. Boyd – Canadian, 2001 [story by Sharon Butala]
The assigned pages for the next discussion are below. Please click to download them.
The podcast link for the May 11 lecture on Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese –
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-xzcu4-122c341
April 13, 2022
Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
Additional reading for interest –
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/books/review/the-art-of-memoir-by-mary-karr.html
https://www.marykarr.com/the-art-of-memoir.html
Questions to think about as you read –
1 – What does she mean by saying we look at the world “once, in childhood / The rest is memory”? Do you remember your childhood better than your adult years; if so, why?
2 – Can you recall your memory of something having changed, during your lifetime? For example, you remember it one way but later you realize that it happened another way, and you changed your mind about what happened?
3 – Do you have disagreements with your family about how things happened? Why do those disagreements matter?
4 – When she says memory “is a pinball in a machine” what is your impression of memory – violent, mobile, volatile? Is that how memory is, in your view? Or is a memory sometimes boring, staid, traditional, stuck?
Click the below links to read the two chapters:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tnt7eQUaqzHa59oXIocljDKOhv_DBtIi/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/164j-jqUZGoboNTlM8gyMurlb9zjDsPaN/view?usp=sharing