Something we talked about tonight in Pronto, or rather that I mentioned in Pronto, was short stories that are actually taken from chapters of novels. The first time I read The Joy Luck Club was after I had taught a short story about the piano lessons, which came from the "Two Kinds" chapter about Jing-Mei Woo. I decided I needed to read the novel so I would know more about the culture, about Amy Tan, and about the background of the novel to share with my students. After that a short story appeared in the junior AmLit book about Waverly and the chess tournaments. "The Rules of the Game" was included nearly verbatim from what appears in the novel.
The point is....this novel is a perfect example of episodic narrative. One chapter, one story, can be lifted from the novel and read without needing to read previous or subsequent chapters in the book. My junior students could enjoy reading these two short stories without knowing any more about The Joy Luck Club than what I shared with them in the introduction and motivation portion of my lesson plans. However, now that I have re-read the novel for this course, I see how all the pieces fit together and how one adds to the understanding of another.
Reading just one 'episode' of a novel may be a tempting taste for some students, but the entire meal should be savored by taking time to read the novel. The reader will not be disappointed!
Mrs. S, you know me. I can never do one of your assignments without doing extra research. I always have to know that whatever I am putting down on paper is not going to make me look dumb! I still find this novel confusing. I have found some good websites to help me get through it. I just wish they had American names! I like that it's small stories that fit together and the stories all have something in common that makes you put the BIG picture together. Pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with your blog on how that the Joy Luck Club is the perfect example of an spisodic narrative and is a compilation of short stories. These short stories yes, could be individually read but I definitely agree that is is not until the entire book is read that one truly appreciates this masterpiece. In one of my blogs, I posted how it has amazed me that these stories meant so much more to me when I read them this time. In high school, I had read several of the selections in this class but I was just reading to meet the assignment and not to really appreciate what was being said. This time for me in reading the Joy Luck Club, I analyzed the many characters and I did additional on line research to give me a broader understanding of what this story was intending to say. I therefore appreciated this story and this class has been great for me to have a larger scope of literary experience.
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