Works in My Anthology
[The section below was written during Topic 15: Web Anthology Reviews. These are the works I would choose from the text if I were completing your assignment. The additional pages in the anthology (that you can see by clicking MORE next to the home button above) would be like the sample essays you see in Topics 7, 11, and 14, all posted on separate pages. I'm not pasting them in because I only wrote one of them myself and it's over a common reading. These pages would include their works cited pages--on the same page of the essay--as below. To see how to add pages, scroll further.]
These works would definitely be included in an anthology that I would edit!
Fiction
"Puppy" by George Saunders
Saunders was probably my favorite discovery reading this text and while I'd like to choose so many others from the fiction unit--some of my favorites are common course readings--I can't NOT choose this story for my own anthology. The way he captures so comically and terribly the voices of two women from different classes, the way he demonstrates how people can see abuse as a kind of love, the desperate hopefulness of both women as they try to fulfill their obligations to absent husbands and present children--it's just gut-wrenchingly sad and beautiful. And funny. How he accomplishes such beautiful tragicomedy is worthy of close study.
Poetry
"Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" by Adrienne Rich
I've always loved Rich, but none of my favorite poems are in this collection. I've fallen in love with the puzzle that is this poem, though. It's full of allusions and quotations only some of which are glossed (explained at the page's bottom) so it's like Sodoko for me, figuring out the references I can and considering how these poetic, historical, biblical, and Shakespearean passages interact with her ordinary domestic imagery of polishing silver or standing in a pantry filled with jam. As someone who likes to think, this is how life seems to be for me, as a daughter-in-law myself who needs to buy jam and complete other chores, but maybe wants to be (at least mentally) somewhere else.
Drama
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry.
I love this play (and film) because it deals with a common human experience--dreams of how a sudden windfall may or may not change a family's life (in other words, why I keep signing up for the HGTV Dream Home). What happens to this family is both part of the human experience, so readers/viewers of all sorts can relate to it, but is also mind-expanding in that it helps me (attempt to) relate to people of a specific time, race, and place. I also love the historical work, The Warmth of Other Suns, about the Great Migration of African Americans to the North, and reading/seeing this city, being in this living room, brings those stories to life.
These works would definitely be included in an anthology that I would edit!
Fiction
"Puppy" by George Saunders
Saunders was probably my favorite discovery reading this text and while I'd like to choose so many others from the fiction unit--some of my favorites are common course readings--I can't NOT choose this story for my own anthology. The way he captures so comically and terribly the voices of two women from different classes, the way he demonstrates how people can see abuse as a kind of love, the desperate hopefulness of both women as they try to fulfill their obligations to absent husbands and present children--it's just gut-wrenchingly sad and beautiful. And funny. How he accomplishes such beautiful tragicomedy is worthy of close study.
Poetry
"Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" by Adrienne Rich
I've always loved Rich, but none of my favorite poems are in this collection. I've fallen in love with the puzzle that is this poem, though. It's full of allusions and quotations only some of which are glossed (explained at the page's bottom) so it's like Sodoko for me, figuring out the references I can and considering how these poetic, historical, biblical, and Shakespearean passages interact with her ordinary domestic imagery of polishing silver or standing in a pantry filled with jam. As someone who likes to think, this is how life seems to be for me, as a daughter-in-law myself who needs to buy jam and complete other chores, but maybe wants to be (at least mentally) somewhere else.
Drama
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry.
I love this play (and film) because it deals with a common human experience--dreams of how a sudden windfall may or may not change a family's life (in other words, why I keep signing up for the HGTV Dream Home). What happens to this family is both part of the human experience, so readers/viewers of all sorts can relate to it, but is also mind-expanding in that it helps me (attempt to) relate to people of a specific time, race, and place. I also love the historical work, The Warmth of Other Suns, about the Great Migration of African Americans to the North, and reading/seeing this city, being in this living room, brings those stories to life.