Joyce Carol Oates wrote "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been" back in 1966. Apparently the story was inspired by a Life Magazine article serial killer Charles Schmid, known as the Pied Piper of Tucson. Oates depicts a young girl who is both simultaneously terrorized and seduced by a magnetic man who is possibly the devil. (He might have hoofs underneath his cowboy boots). He never uses force, so how does he gain ultimate power over her? Oates dedicated the story to Bob Dylan, because it …
Book Review – Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen
Park Avenue Summer, by Renée Rosen, is about Helen Gurley Brown, who became the first female editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in 1965. The book is a novel, but Helen Gurley Brown was real, and she had an amazing, impactful life. Some Helen Gurley Brown quotes: “Cosmo is feminist in that we believe women are just as smart and capable as men are and can achieve anything men can.” “I was mousy on the outside, but inside, I’m this tiger and I have to …
How to Teach Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale: Summary & Study Questions
Why study The Winter’s Tale? This play offers a lot for discussion. I wouldn’t read the entire play with your students, but rather, discuss the story, the themes, and certain notable lines instead. Plot summary: Leontes, king of Sicilia, wants his childhood buddy, Polixenes, to stick around for a while, rather than return to New Bohemia, where he is king. But Polixenes has been away for nine months, so he says that he needs to get back to his kingdom. Leontes asks …
The Brontë Sisters: Anne Brontë and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“...how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation, crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth’s best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery, as far as man can do it, it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband - I HATE him!” I am a huge Brontë fan. While Charlotte, Emily, and Anne often get lumped together, they had fairly distinct voices. Anne especially has been overlooked or …
A Modern Othello: Tracy Chevalier’s New Boy
Reading New Boy, a modern Othello, was disturbing yet enthralling. I felt like I was in a speeding vehicle as it barreled down the road. I wanted to hit the brakes but knew the inevitable crash was coming. Yet, I couldn’t stop reading, even as I knew the ending would be tragic. It left me feeling extremely unsettled, but in a good way. Author Tracy Chevalier set the story in a 1970s schoolyard playground, and that was …