HarperAcademic

FREE Common Core Esamplers

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:24:00 +0000

In other big news, we have two free Common Core esamplers releasing on May 21!

The first, 12 Common Core Essentials: Literature, features 12 of our best new and classic literature titles (like Their Eyes Were Watching God, and The Alchemist) that fit perfectly into the English Language Arts Standards for Middle and High School.

The second, 10 Common Core Essentials: Nonfiction, similarly features 10 of our best nonfiction titles (like The American Reader: Words that Moved a Nation, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind), as the Common Core encourages adding more nonfiction titles to your curriculum.

Please check out all of the wonderful books in these free esamplers here or in the "Common Core" tab at the top of our blog!

NEW Agatha Christie Flashcards

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:03:00 +0000

We’re very happy to share two new sets of flashcards we created to supplement the teaching of Agatha Christie’s classic titles And Then There Were None, and Murder on the Orient Express.

Check them out here, or at their new home on our blog's sidebar (look right), to test your students on their knowledge of these classic mysteries in a really fun and engaging way, either chapter by chapter or in full!

New Addition to FYE Catalog: Rolf Dobelli's THE ART OF THINKING CLEARLY

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:24:00 +0000

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been selecting the best books of the past year to include in our new First-Year Student catalog. There are a number of wonderful new additions, the first of which is The Art of Thinking Clearly, by world-class thinker and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli.

Have you ever invested time in something that, in hindsight, just wasn’t worth it? Or continued doing something you knew was bad for you? These are examples of cognitive biases, simple errors we all make in our day-to-day thinking. The Art of Thinking Clearly is an eye-opening look at human psychology and reasoning—essential reading for anyone who wants to avoid these “cognitive errors” and make better choices in all aspects of their lives. This indispensable book reveals the most common errors in judgment, and how to avoid them.

With short, punchy chapters such as "The Calamity of Conformity: Groupthink," "It's Not What You Say, but How You Say It: Framing," and "How Eye-Catching Details Render Us Blind: Salience Effect," The Art of Thinking Clearly will change the way your students think and transform their decision-making, enabling them to make better choices now and in the future.

Praise for The Art of Thinking Clearly:

“Rolf Dobelli is endowed with both imagination and realism, a combination hard to find since the 16th century Renaissance.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

"A serious examination of the faulty reasoning that leads to repeated mistakes by individuals, businesses, and nations…In this fascinating book, Dobelli does not offer a recipe for happiness but a well-considered treatise on avoiding ‘self-induced unhappiness.’”—Booklist (starred review)

If you would like to read more about Dobelli’s book, please click here.

Kenneth C. Davis Hosts #sschat TONIGHT on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:31:00 +0000

When looking at the recent "Recommended Reading List for College Bound Students" from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Kenneth C. Davis, author of the popular Don't Know Much About series, was struck by how dated the selections seemed. The most recent addition to the fiction list—Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solutide—was published in 1967, and the latest in the nonfiction arena includes John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, published in 1957.

While Davis agrees that these are certainly classic titles, he wants to engage teachers in conversation about the "new classics"—ones that represent even greater diversity in race, class, and gender, and confront the issues of the last 50 years in this country and around the world.

Davis wants to know what "new classics" you use in your classroom. So join in on twitter tonight (May 13) at 7pm ET, using #sschat.

And to check out his blog post on the chat, please click here.

Molly Melching Interviewed on PBS NewsHour

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:28:00 +0000

Molly Melching, the central focus of Aimee Molloy’s However Long the Night: Molly Melching’s Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph, gave a wonderful interview last night on PBS NewsHour. In the segment, Melching speaks about her collaboration with Senegalese locals to create the remarkably successful Tostan, a democracy and human-rights-based education initiative to promote relationships built upon dignity, equality, and respect.

Unlike many Western organizations of the past that have tried to transform African cultures from the outside, Molly Melching and Tostan’s philosophy is to work within a community, allowing people to make major changes to their culture of their own volition with the understanding that true change must come from within—a wonderful lesson for students looking to make social change anywhere in the world.

Tostan's groundbreaking strategies have led to better education for the women of rural Africa, improved health care, a decrease in child/forced marriage, and declarations by thousands of African communities to abandon the centuries-old practice of female genital cutting.

If you would like to check out the full interview, please click here.

Course Adoption: Victor Cha's THE IMPOSSIBLE STATE

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:59:00 +0000

Victor Cha’s The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future just got adopted in a course on modern Korea!

The Impossible State is the definitive account of the most secretive country in the world, written by the much-lauded professor and former White House Official, Victor Cha. The volume, published last year, explores how, in a world that has seen the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist satellites, North Korea has managed to maintain its tenuous hold. Filled with anecdotes from his time in North Korea, where he served as the US Deputy Head of Delegation for the Six Party Talks, Cha’s book is a comprehensive guide to modern North Korea, from its seemingly endless war with its southern neighbor, to its decimated economy, to its nuclear pursuits and threats. Cha ultimately warns of its regime’s potential collapse under Kim Jung-Un—a fall for which America and its allies may be woefully unprepared.

With all the nuclear threats coming out of Pyongyang in recent months, this should be a really fascinating course. It’s odd that a country could be in the news so much, yet still be so seemingly inscrutable, and The Impossible State does a wonderful job combatting the mystery.

My FYE Pick: Patti Smith's JUST KIDS

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:16:00 +0000

I receive daily desk copy requests for Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids for smaller classes, but I think it would actually be a wonderful choice for a first-year common read in colleges (especially those in New York). This is Patti Smith’s account of the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. But mostly, it is a tribute to her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe—two kids who promised to take care of each other—through their evolution as artists in a new city. I just finished the National Book Award winner and have been recommending it to everyone I know. It’s the best thing I’ve read in a very long time.

While Just Kids might seem like an out-of-the-box choice for Common Read programs, I think it would be really wonderful because it is an inspirational ode to creativity in all its forms, and a fascinating coming-of-age story regardless of students’ acquaintance with the era (though, Smith interacts with Jimi Hendrix, Allen Ginsburg, Andy Warhol, and Sam Shepard along the way, so I’d be surprised if there was no student familiarity). I wish I had been given something like this to read in any college course, and I know that it will spark the imaginations of many college students, who will find a dreamy compatriot in Smith.

Popular Course Adoption: Stephen Prothero's GOD IS NOT ONE

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:35:00 +0000

When HarperCollins hired me in October, I suddenly became very aware of the logos of HarperCollins imprints in stores, in libraries, and especially at home. And it quickly became obvious that of the religious books I took from college to my apartment in the city, the overwhelming majority were published by HarperCollins. Our religion catalog is really amazing in its depth and scope, featuring titles that are among our most adopted across all genres.

Today I received a desk copy request for one of our most popular (and controversial) religious books that I'd like to share: God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World by Stephen Prothero for a class on the history of the world’s religions.

I’ve often heard, in efforts to minimize the differences and conflicts between the world’s major religions, that they all have the same origin—some early belief in transcendent unity—and so, they are all just different paths to the same God. Well, in Stephen Prothero’s view, this is minimizing and flat out wrong. In God is Not One, he contends that each of the world’s great religions is trying to solve a very different human problem, casting them inherently at odds:

Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission
Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation
Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening
Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God

His arguments make this text a necessary foil to the Traditionalist School of religious thinking, popularized by scholars like Huston Smith and Karen Armstrong.

Please check out our religion catalog here if you would like to see more great books by HarperCollins authors.

Course Adoption for SNAKES IN SUITS

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:23:00 +0000

It's rare when a book becomes more relevant after its publication date, but that seems to be the case with Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert D. Hare' Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work, which just got adopted into a psychology of criminal behavior course.

This book was published in early 2007—just before the Global Financial Crisis and worldwide recession. In the months after the crash in 2008, I remember hearing a lot of people flippantly compare Wall Street big-wigs to sociopaths or psychopaths. But in Snakes and Suits, we learn that these comparisons may not be as outrageous as we originally thought.

When most people think “psychopath,” images of Hannibal Lecter or some other mass murderer come to mind. But Dr. Babiak and Dr. Hare share that many psychopaths just want money or power or fame. And to achieve that, they often head to the corporate world. The authors reveal the ways that psychopaths use greed culture to their advantage, and often emerge as rising corporate stars because of their willingness to take big risks and their instinctual skills of manipulation. Learning the warning signs of such behavior will not only allow your students to put the recent economic crisis and some of its key players in perspective, but also protect themselves in their future career endeavors.

Check out HarperAcademic on Tumblr

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:46:00 +0000

Don't forget to follow our Tumblr page (http://harperacademic.tumblr.com/), where I recount the best desk copy requests of the day and regale everyone with the more depressing thoughts of dead philosophers to kickstart the weekend.

Disclaimer: That was today. The dead philosopher was famous human-enthusiast and "lovable grump", Nietzsche. Enter at your own risk.

Jeff Chu's DOES JESUS REALLY LOVE ME? Featured in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:35:00 +0000

A wonderful review of Jeff Chu's Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review this Sunday, written by Dan Savage.

Jeff Chu, a gay man who was raised a Baptist, has always grappled with one question: Does Jesus really love me, sexuality and all? He set out across America, consulting everyone from the ultra-conservative, vehemently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church to uber-liberal Episcopal bishop Mary Glasspool, proclaimer of divine love and liberation. His journey exposes the infinitely divided and increasingly combative branches of Christian America, a faith and a nation at odds.

Chu’s insightful book is essential for any classroom debate on contemporary religion and politics. In his review, Savage raves, “Chu has written a fascinating, thoughtful and important book. He captures the fractures and conflict at a moment when the issue of what to do with L.G.B.T. people is tearing Christian denominations apart. Does Jesus Really Love Me? deserves to be widely read.”

To read the full review, please click here.

Gilbert King's DEVIL IN THE GROVE Wins Pulitzer Prize!

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:09:00 +0000

HUGE congratulations are in order to Gilbert King—his book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America just won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction!

A gripping true story about murder, rape, racism, and the law, Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove follows one of America’s most heated court cases, and paints a rare, unparalleled portrait of Thurgood Marshall, arguably the greatest American lawyer of 20th century. Just as he was about to bring the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education to the Supreme Court, Marshall risked his life to save a young black man slated for the electric chair—exonerating him, against all odds, from dying for a crime he did not commit.

Click here if you would like to read more about this amazing book.

Hurston's DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD in E-Reader Ad

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:53:00 +0000

You may not be able to tell based on my stellar photography skills (it's the phone's fault, I swear!), but this is a picture of a e-reader advertisement I saw in the subway yesterday, featuring mostly new titles, along with Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hurston's wonderful autobiography. As you may have noticed, we've been crafting course suggestions for all of Hurston's books for the past few months, and her revealing memoir is one of our favorites, so it was very exciting for me to see this ad. If you would like to check out our course suggestions for this title, please click here!

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's THIS CHILD WILL BE GREAT

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:10:00 +0000

I just received a desk copy request for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President to be used in a course on “Black Women History and Cultures.”

In January 2006, after the Republic of Liberia had been racked by fourteen years of brutal civil conflict, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—Africa's "Iron Lady"—was sworn in as president, an event that marked a tremendous turning point in the history of the West African nation. This is her personal memoir, a story that leads from her childhood to her amazing rise to power, an inspirational tale that encourages women everywhere to shatter the proverbial glass ceiling, and pursue the highest leadership roles previously deemed unattainable.

It comes as a surprise to me that this book doesn’t get adopted more often. As a sophomore in college, I watched Pray the Devil Back to Hell, the award-winning documentary about the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement, which led to the end of the Liberian Civil War, and the eventual election of Sirleaf as Africa’s first woman president. Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee (the movement’s organizer) won Nobel Peace prizes for their work, which started as a Muslim-Christian female prayer coalition, and expanded to other non-violent protests (including a sex strike). Sirleaf’s life story is truly as remarkable as the title suggests, overcoming abuse, imprisonment, and exile to become a powerful political advocate for social justice and peace. Click here if you’d like to read more about her journey in her own words.

WENCH as Composition Common Read

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:05:00 +0000

We just received happy news from Francis Marion University: Dolen Perkins-Valdez's Wench has been chosen as the common read in fourteen composition classes. Congratulations, Dolen!

Wench is a wholly original novel based on a little known historical fact. Lizzie, Reenie and Sweet have forged a strong friendship over their summers spent to Tawawa House–the pre-Civil War Ohio resort where southern White men go to take their enslaved black mistresses when the South becomes unbearably hot. But when the self-assured Mawu shows up, speaking of freedom and escape, Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet must confront what it would mean to leave their loved ones behind, and break the psychological and emotional bonds that tie them to their masters—whom they love in spite of unspeakable brutality. With an unflinching eye, Wench explores the moral complexities of slavery as the four women witness the end of this dark era of American history.

A number of people who came to our booth at the First-Year Experience conference told us that Wench had been recommended to them based on the strength of Perkins-Valdez’s writing and her ability to bring this overlooked area of history to light. It offers so much material for classroom discussion, and we’re very happy that schools are starting to take notice.

Kate Hubbard's SERVING VICTORIA: LIFE IN THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:54:00 +0000

A self-professed anglophile, I was very excited to see Kate Hubbard’s Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household in Diane’s inbox. And I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you may be interested as well, because it bears some resemblance to a little show called Downton Abbey, and its predecessor, Upstairs Downstairs. Though set during the notoriously conservative 63-year reign of Queen Victoria (and, admittedly, there were no Turkish gents dying in the bed of Princess Beatrice), Hubbard’s book serves to shatter a number of our misconceptions about the Queen and her household.

Drawing on many previously unpublished letters and diaries, Hubbard follows six members of Victoria’s inner household circle, ranging from her maid of honor to her personal physician, throughout her reign. The result is a more vulnerable portrait of the Queen history has painted as austere. Here is a woman prone to giggling fits, selfishness, behavior that ran from controlling to comical to kind. Through her staff’s eyes, we witness the debilitating heartbreak of her husband’s death, and the sympathy she showed to others during their own tragedies.

Serving Victoria offers a fresh view of a monarch we thought we knew, and illuminates what it truly meant to serve the Queen. It will be on sale April 30.

Common Read Adoption for Sophia Al-Maria's THE GIRL WHO FELL TO EARTH

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:29:00 +0000

We just got word of an exciting Common Read adoption: Northwestern University has chosen Sophia Al-Maria’s The Girl Who Fell to Earth for their 2013 "One Book" program, making it required reading for all students and faculty next year—on both their Evanston and Qatar campuses. Congratulations, Sophia!

Award-winning filmmaker and writer Sophia Al-Maria’s The Girl Who Fell to Earth is a funny and wry coming-of-age memoir about growing up in between American and Gulf Arab cultures. With poignancy and humor, Al-Maria shares the struggles of being raised by an American mother and Bedouin father while shuttling between homes in the Pacific Northwest and the Middle East. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Al-Maria’s journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds.

Sophia’s book has been on our minds a lot lately, as it received a lot of positive attention at the Conference on College Composition and Communication that Diane attended in Las Vegas. While her life growing up may have been unusual, Al-Maria’s story is marked by subtlety and relatability, and insightfully examines cultural differences without delving into the dramatic.

You can browse inside her book here.

Secretary Kerry and Kamila Sidiqi, Protagonist of THE DRESSMAKER OF KHAIR KHANA

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:18:00 +0000

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, just emailed us this amazing picture of Secretary of State John Kerry with Kamila Sidiqi, the protagonist of her book, in Kabul. Kerry met with ten female entrepreneurs at the embassy on Tuesday.

For those of you who don’t know, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is former ABC News reporter Lemmon’s riveting look at the life of Kamila Sidiqi and other women of Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s fearful rise to power.

Kamila’s world changed overnight when the Taliban seized control of the city of Kabul. After receiving a teaching degree during the civil war—a rare achievement for any Afghan woman—she was subsequently banned from school and confined to her home. When her father and brother were forced to flee the city, Kamila became the sole breadwinner for her five siblings. Armed only with grit and determination, she picked up a needle and thread and created a thriving business of her own. The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the story of this unlikely entrepreneur who mobilized her community under the Taliban, and gives rare insight into the lives of many Afghan women.

Lemmon's inspirational book is one of our favorites for Common Read programs and received a lot of attention at FYE. Please click here if you would like access to the instructor's guide for The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.

Interview in ShelfAwareness with Aimee Molloy, author of HOWEVER LONG THE NIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:08:00 +0000

ShelfAwareness just published a great interview with Aimee Molloy, author of However Long the Night: Molly Melching’s Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph. Molloy’s book follows America-to-Senegal-transplant Molly Melching and many Senegalese women as they worked together to improve Sengalese education, and bring an end to a deeply entrenched but dangerous cultural practice: female genital cutting (FGC).

Melching arrived in Senegal as a college exchange student from Illinois and decided to stay, having fallen in love with the country, and especially the villages outside the French-influenced city Dakar. Observing that all schools taught in French as opposed to the language the locals spoke at home—Wolof—Melching began to question traditional European standards of education, and worked with locals in order to tailor an education plan to what they wanted to learn, in their native tongue. This educational project, called “Tostan” or “breakthrough”, was a remarkable success. And the resulting empowerment of Senegalese women led to a highly unanticipated action on their parts: a movement to end the long-held practice of FGC.

Molloy, in her interview with ShelfAwareness, shares that she was very aware of the sensitivities that accompany any exploration of Melching’s story and FGC. She didn’t want to portray Melching as some “Great White Hope” because that’s not what she was—Melching did not come to Africa and single-handedly change anything. Rather, it was the collaboration, rooted in understanding, between Melching and the Senegalese people that made Tostan, and the eventual anti-FGC movement, work.

Furthermore, Molloy was cognizant of Western feelings on FGC—she admits that in the past, she felt anger and disgust towards anyone involved in it. But she also realized that in order to tell the story of the Senegalese women (some cutters turned activists), she had to look past Western preconceptions. Molloy relates that FGC was not borne from men’s desires to curb women’s sexual promiscuity. Rather, “The truth is that the tradition is one that is perpetuated by women themselves, and women do it in order to create a better future for their daughters. Because choosing to not cut one's daughter would be setting her up for a future of social isolation, it is in many way's a mother's greatest act of love. So regardless of the feelings we might bring to this issue, sensitivity to this reality must be part of any discussion about FGC, and certainly in any efforts to bring an end to the practice.”

It is this kind of approach, weary of Western biases, that makes Molloy’s book such a success. If you would like to read more about However Long the Night, please check out the full ShelfAwareness profile here.

Online Resources for THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:42:00 +0000

For those of you who haven’t read it, William Kamkwamba’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope is the amazing story of a Malawian boy who figured out how to build a windmill from scraps that helped his community battle the devastating drought and famine that loomed with every season. It is a remarkable true story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity.

One of our most popular books for Common Read programs, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has wonderful online resources for educators:

- Alexandria City Public Schools chose The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind as a common book for 8th graders. The resources, which include detailed goals, lesson plans, and interdisciplinary suggestions for elementary school and high school, can be found here.

- BookRags also features some lesson plans on their site, in multiple formats.

- The University of South Carolina Aiken created a reading guide and research guide when The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind was their 2012 First-Year Reading Experience book.

- The Museum of Science & Industry Chicago posted a lesson plan on building a wind turbine here.

- The University of North Carolina’s School of Education published a similar lesson plan on harnessing alternative energy here.

- Our reading guide for the novel can be found here.

And, you and your students can meet William in his TedTalk below:

Course Suggestions for Zora Neale Hurston's THE COMPLETE STORIES

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:28:00 +0000

Zora Neale Hurston’s The Complete Stories is a landmark collection of short fiction that showcases the evolution of one of the greatest American authors. Spanning from 1921 to 1955, most of the tales in The Complete Stories only appeared in literary magazines during her lifetime. Together, they attest to Hurston’s remarkable range, and introduce themes that haunt her lengthier works. Rich in literary imagery and style, with a commanding narrative voice, the collection fully establishes Hurston as a master not just of the long-form narrative, but of the short-form as well.

Suggested Course Use

While courses on Southern short fiction often overlook the contributions of black women writers, Zora Neale Hurston’s The Complete Stories is an indispensable addition to such a course, offering an entirely different, often marginalized perspective. A course examining the trajectory of Southern female fiction from the 19th century onwards might start with Kate Chopin’s socially progressive tales. Then, students could read Zora Neale Hurston’s The Complete Stories and selections from Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Carson McCullers, and in doing so, examine the commonalities of mid-century female authorship in the South, as well as the differing preoccupations of black and white writers. Topics to discuss include the roles women were expected to play; the racial tensions that exist in an unequal society; the role of religion in women’s lives; and the social consequences of sexual behavior. Moving on in the century, the course could then examine rural relationships in Bobbie Ann Mason’s Shiloh and Other Stories, and sexuality in Dorothy Allison’s Trash: Short Stories. All together, these short works of fiction will highlight the recurring aspects of Southern literature, from the gothic and the grotesque, to questions of religion, class, gender, race, and, most importantly, place.

Course Suggestions for Zora Neale Hurston's MULES AND MEN

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:49:00 +0000

“Simply the most exciting book on black folklore and culture I have ever read”—Roger D. Abrahams

Mules and Men is a treasury of black America’s folklore as collected by Zora Neale Hurston, the storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings, and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery.

Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls “a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling.” Set intimately within the social context of black life, the stories, “big old lies,” songs, Voodoo customs, and superstitions recorded in Mules and Men capture the imagination and bring back to life the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans—and throws into relief the amalgamation of African and European tradition which is key to understanding African-American history and culture.

Suggested Course Use

For those who want students to understand the most important concepts, beliefs, and practices in African cultures and philosophy, Mules and Men provides deep insight into its continuing influence on African-American culture and literature. Anchoring the syllabus with a text such as Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation edited by Roy Richard Grinker, Stephen C. Lubkemann, and Christopher B. Steiner will give students an introduction to the diverse cultures of Africa and a history of the interpretations of those cultures. With traditional folktales woven into the novel, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart can be used to familiarize students with traditional African (Nigerian/Igbo) philosophy and the essential values of the Igbo. Students should take note that these folktales disappear from the narrative with the arrival of the Christian missionaries. More recent African views can be explored in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure—which addresses a critical issue—the collision of Islamic African values and Western culture.

Next, with Zora Neale Hurston and Mules and Men as their guide, students can explore the culture and literature of the African diaspora as they journey into the rural African-American towns of the South in the 1930s. As they hear “the big old lies” that capture the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans, Zora Neale Hurston invites students to the parties, front porches, jooks, and into the lives of the storytellers. They’ll even learn a few Voodoo spells along the way. And, since this is a wonderful oral tradition—you might want your students to listen to the audio edition, which is read by Ruby Dee.

To end on a contemporary note, the stories in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck take place in Nigeria and American as they explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

Course Suggestions for Zora Neale Hurston's MULE BONE

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:51:00 +0000

“Mule Bone succeeds in creating a startling, linguistically lush folk comedy that nonetheless reflects the tragic legacy of slavery.”—New York Times

In 1930, two giants of African-American literature, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, joined forces to create a lively, insightful, often wildly farcical look inside a rural Southern black community—the three-act play Mule Bone. In this hilarious story, Jim and Dave are a struggling song-and-dance team, and when a woman comes between them, chaos ensues in their tiny Florida hometown. This theatrical work broke new ground while triggering a bitter controversy between the collaborators that kept it out of the public eye for sixty years.

This edition of the classic features Zora Neale Hurston’s original story, “The Bone of Contention,” as well as the complete recounting of the acrimonious literary dispute that prevented Mule Bone from being produced or published until decades after the authors’ deaths.

Suggested Course Use

Women have been writing plays for centuries—but most of your students will be able to name only a very few female playwrights. A course entitled "Women in the American Theater" should correct this, and the curriculum will also allow students to study women’s history in the United States as well as feminist and gender theories as they have influenced and been reflected back by American theater.

Anchoring the class with Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins’s Women in American Theatre will give students insight into the heritage of women in American theater through interviews and essays that address the contributions of women to theater as well as the problems and successes they have encountered in developing their careers.

In addition to Zora Neale Hurston’s Mule Bone, plays such as Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, Marsha Norman’s Getting Out, Alice Childress’s Wedding Band, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive will allow students to become familiar with women who have been instrumental in American theater; further understand the ways in which gender, class, race, and politics have influenced women's access to careers in the theater; and contemplate how women in American theater have challenged conventional attitudes towards women.

Course Suggestions for SERAPH ON THE SUWANEE

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:01:00 +0000

Acclaimed for her pitch-perfect accounts of rural black life and culture, Zora Neale Hurston explored new territory in her novel Seraph on the Suwanee—a story of two people at once deeply in love and deeply at odds, set among the community of poor white Southerners at the turn of the 20th century. Full of insights into the nature of love, attraction, faith, and loyalty, the novel follows young Arvay Henson, convinced she will never find true happiness, as she defends herself from unwanted suitors with hysterical fits and religious fervor. But into her life comes bright and enterprising Jim Meserve, who knows that Arvay is the woman for him, and nothing she can do will dissuade him.

Alive with the same passion and understanding of the human heart that made Their Eyes Were Watching God a classic, Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee masterfully explores the evolution of a marriage and the conflicting desires of an unforgettable young woman in search of herself and her place in the world.

Course Suggestions

Zora Neale Hurston’s Arvay and Jim are part of a Western literary tradition that features a couple overcoming obstacles in order to marry and to stay married—making Seraph on the Suwanee a wonderful addition to any course that focuses on marriage and gender roles. Hurston's novel will help students explore questions such as: Why has marriage been central to so many modern Western narratives? How has the cultural construction of marriage changed over time? What part has literature played in informing as well as reflecting these constructions? What does marriage represent? What are the politics of marriage? Does marriage mean different things to men and women? Are our expectations of marriage realistic?

To give students some historical perspective, the reading list might begin with Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage, which will remind students that marrying for love is a very new development. Next, Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well could be followed by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or Jane Austen’s Emma, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Zora Neale Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee, and, to end on a contemporary note, Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, or Ben Greenman’s forthcoming novel The Slippage.

The syllabus might also add or substitute the film adaptations for some of these novels, and include films such as George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib and Sam Mendes’s American Beauty.

Course Suggestions for EVERY TONGUE GOT TO CONFESS

noreply@blogger.com (HarperAcademic) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:33:00 +0000

“Zora Neale Hurston’s representation of the folk voice in her anthropological work, autobiography, and fiction expanded the idea of what counts as literature, reframing the relationship between spoken and written verbal art, high versus low culture, affirming folk voices, female voices.”—John Edgar Wideman, from the forward to Every Tongue Got to Confess

Zora Neale Hurston journeyed through the American Gulf States for an anthropological study funded by Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy philanthropist. Mules and Men, Hurston’s first major anthropological text, emerged as the published result of this late-1920s study. But much more of Hurston’s collected folklore from this period was published posthumously in 2001 in Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States.

Every Tongue Got to Confess features nearly 500 folktales, ranging in length from one sentence to a few pages. Together, this bittersweet, often hilarious collection weaves a vibrant tapestry of African-American life in the rural South, covertly revealing attitudes about faith, love, family, slavery, race, and community in the process.

Course Suggestions

Hurston’s collection, written in the Southern black vernacular of the 1920s, has been used in narrative theory, ethnography, African-American literature, and women’s literature courses. It is often used in conjunction with books like Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman (and Other Tales), in order to examine the complicated concept of “oral literature,” and the process of translation, and thereby interpretation, that must occur in any adaptation from the oral to the written form.

Aside from examining what is gained and lost in this interpretation, any examination of Hurston’s work must also examine its political implications, especially when referring to the continuing conflicts between black and white Americans. Euro-American culture has traditionally validated only written works as “literature,” therefore casting African “orature” as unfit and unworthy. In light of this, many intriguing questions for your students will arise:

- Is working within the European-framework of written literature debasing African oral tradition by suggesting that stories must be written in order to be valued?
- Or, are Hurston’s written folktales spreading these stories to a wider audience, celebrating them in the process?
- Alternatively, in writing these stories down in the black vernacular, is Hurston compelling those of European backgrounds to become complicit in the oral tradition as well, as reading the vernacular is easiest when the words are sounded out and pronounced out loud?

For your students who are tackling Hurston’s folktales, reading aloud is actually a useful strategy. To illustrate, we have a video of Zora’s niece, Professor Lucy Anne Hurston, reading sections from Every Tongue Got to Confess online. Click here if you'd like to see it!