FYS Final
The Displaced Person - Laura Dorger
Two Kinds - Amy Tan
Valedictorian - N.K. Jemisin
The Depressed Person - David Foster Wallace
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
Ice Man - Haruki Murakami
Brownies - ZZ Packer
Saving - Carter Sickels
Everyday Use - Alice Walker
Simple Recipes - Madeleine Thien
The Red Convertible - Louise Erdrich
A Nurse’s Story - Peter Baida
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
Authors:
Flannery O’Connor - Flannery O'Connor, a devout Roman Catholic writer from Georgia, is renowned for her Southern Gothic stories that explore themes of grace, morality, and redemption. While her work often includes violent and grotesque elements, she dismissed these descriptions, viewing her stories as "Christian realism," confronting harsh spiritual truths. Fascinated by birds, O'Connor raised peafowl on the farm she shared with her mother for most of her life. She lived with lupus, which eventually claimed her life at age 39.
Amy Tan - She was born in 1952, Oakland, California. After her brother and father died of brain tumors in 1966, she, her mom and younger brother moved to Switzerland. Tan had a difficult relationship with her mother. At one point, Daisy [Tan's mother] held a knife to Amy's throat and threatened to kill her while the two were arguing over Amy's new boyfriend. Her mother wanted Tan to be independent, stressing that Tan needed to make sure she was self-sufficient. Tan later found out that her mother had three abortions while in China. Daisy often threatened to kill herself, saying that she wanted to join her mother (Tan's grandmother died by suicide). While in school, Tan worked odd jobs—serving as a bartender, and pizza maker—before starting a writing career.
N.K. Jemisin - Born in 1972 in Iowa, N.K. Jemisin spent her early childhood in New York before moving to Mobile, Alabama, with her mother, a science teacher, following her parents' divorce. Summers with her artist father in New York exposed her to creativity, while her love for science fiction provided an escape and inspiration. Known for her degree in psychology, Jemisin explores themes of power and systems of subjugation, which are central to her writing. Her works often address societal dynamics and the human condition through richly imagined sci-fi and fantasy worlds.
David Foster Wallace - David Foster Wallace studied English and philosophy at Amherst College and went on to become a write and English professor. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction and his works are often referenced in popular culture. One aspect of his writing style include prolific endnotes and footnotes, as you will see in our reading. As you read "The Depressed Person," notice the effect of footnotes on your thought process and perceptions of the story or of Wallace himself.
Wallace struggled with addiction and depression and hung himself in 2008.
Raymond Carver - Raymond Carver writes in a voice and about subjects he knows very well. His characters are often poor, downtrodden drinkers who struggle with the more productive day-to-day activities. Carver nails his characters' voices and attitudes. Perhaps it is because he understood the struggles of merely surviving. He married right out of high school. He did not come from money (his father worked in a sawmill). He supported his wife and two children working as a gas station attendant (yeah, that used to be a job), janitor and delivery man. He struggled with alcoholism and was hospitalized often for his addiction but continued to write during this time. He died of lung cancer in 1988 at the age of 50.
Haruki Murakami - was born in Kobe, Japan in 1949, but his writing style has been characterized as "un-Japanese" prompting Murakami to claim he was the black sheep in the Japenese literary world. His writing influences come from Western as well as Russian authors. He had a cafe and jazz bar, Peter Cat, that he ran with his wife, Yoko. Although he did not start training for marathons until he was 33, he has become a marathon runner and has even written a nonfiction book on his experiences with running called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
ZZ Packer - ZZ Packer recalled an interview when was asked if she would "consider [herself] a black writer," and "almost got into [her] punching mode. 'Of course, because I am black. And I'm a writer.'" But she acknowledges that she does not solely write for a black audience. "So, it’s one of those things that, yeah, the stories are definitely going to be influenced by the fact that I am black. I mean those stories wouldn’t have been written if I had been white. Also, one of the things I want to do with the stories I don’t even know how conscious I was—it’s very much this felt thing with me—they are human beings and often times in America, people will try to say this is a black story or this a white story (that’s sort of the default mode)…"
Carter Sickels - grew up in Central Ohio, but his extended family is from SE Ohio, which is where he also went to college. His stories, include queer and gay culture set in Appalachia and rural spaces. He was an assistant professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University and identifies as a gay trans man
Alice Walker - born in 1944 to sharecroppers (sharecroppers are farmers who don't own the land they work on, but repay for the use of the land with a share of the crop). Walker legally added "Tallulah Kate" to her name in 1994 to honor her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, and paternal grandmother, Tallulah. Her most famous book is The Color Purple but has also written poetry and non-fiction. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is an activist and a feminist.
Gish Jen - a first-generation Chinese American. Her parents emigrated from China in the 1940s. The influence of the Western value of individualism versus the interdependence of family members in Eastern tradition is one of her sources of writing inspiration. She explained "This is the way, maybe, in which I am still the daughter of immigrants,...It was a very long time before I was able to hear my own voice, and even to this day I need to be in a quiet place and feel I'm away from my parents, my editor, my agent, even my audience, in order to hear what it is I really have to say."
Madeleine Thien - born in Canada to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother. She studied dance in college but felt she lacked the talent to continue and so switched to writing. According to the Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, her work reflects the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic Asian communities.
Many of Thien's works focus on the theme of time in connection to place and human emotion. In an interview from 2016, she states that she is thinking about "the way that women’s lives are expressed in literature at this moment," and that she is interested in writing about women of color and sexuality.
Louise Erdrich - not raised on an American Indian reservation and her father was German-American, her mother was Chippewa woman of half Ojibwe and half French heritage. Her parents were teacher at a boarding school established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in North Dakota. Her father encouraged her to write stories paying her a nickel per story. Her own family ended in allegations and a suicide. She accused her ex-husband of abusing their children, and he committed suicide. "When asked in an interview if writing is a lonely life for her, Erdrich replied, 'Strangely, I think it is. I am surrounded by an abundance of family and friends and yet I am alone with the writing. And that is perfect.' Erdrich lives in Minneapolis. .Many of her stories are often based on American Indian life.
Jhumpa Lahiri - was born in London to parents from West Bengal, India, but grew up in Rhode Island. Her mother wanted her family to know its Bengali heritage and would return the children to India often. Lahiri says she has "felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new." These two worlds created a tension that would find its way into her stories.
In 2012, Lahiri moved to Rome and learned Italian, both writing novels in Italian and translating from Italian.