Good Books for Teachers

July, 2008

GETTING THE KNACK: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises (NCTE Publication) Clear explanations. Good examples of student writing. You'll want to try some of these yourself.

THE STORY AND ITS WRITER:: An Introduction to Short Fiction (St Martins Press) An excellent collection of classic stories. It also includes essays about writing by the authors. . One of my favorites is "Creative Writing 101" by Raymond Carver.

THE BLACK FLOWER, by Howard Bahr. (PICADOR) This is an outstanding piece of historical fiction. Very strong stuff indeed.

REVISION: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction, by David Kaplan. (STORY PRESS) Excellent tips. Good examples. He knows what he's talking about.

THE NEW YORKER of 5/26/08 features an article by Ian Frazier called "Hungry Minds." It's about a New York City soup kitchen that offers creative writing classes.

Certain stories are useful to us because they show young writers a new way to relate events. Such a story is "Conversations with an Absent Lover on a Beachless Afternoon" by Ana Castillo.

The story is simple: A love affair has just ended, and the woman is looking back -- not just at the affair, but at her whole life.

Instead of using a series of flashbacks, Castillo has the female character write 35 short one-sided conversations to the ex lover. He has left and this is what she has to say to him. It begins like this:

I can assure you that the last thing I want to do is scare you off, away, further than you are going already to go because you, in your own words, are just starting your life, and I, by my own account, am half way done. It is not my intention to stop you. No one stopped me, try as he -- or she -- might. I kept moving, like a shark, in one concentrated direction. No, never has anyone stopped me. Nor can anything, short of death.

In some, she talks about the love affair. In others she talks about her traditional Mexican-American mother and her not-so-dependable father. Each of these conversations adds to our knowledge of what has happened to make her a woman who knows exactly why she had an affair with a younger man, why it ended, and why she feels no remorse.

If you read the story, you might ask your students to write a story that begins after something has ended -- a friendship, a job. Tell the story through one person's imaginary conversation with another. Tell not only the story of the ending, but of what led up to it.

Conversations with an Absent Lover on a Beachless Afternoon, by Ana Castillo can be found at http://seadeeper.com/shortstories/conversations.php

Loverboys: Stories
Ana Castillo
ISBN-10 - 0393039595, W. W. Norton & Company; 1st ed edition (1996)

New Chicago Stories
Fred Gardaphe
ISBN 0-9627425-0-3, City Stoop Press (1990)

Bibliographic Guide to Chicana and Latina Narrative:
by Kathy S. Leonard
ISBN-10: 0313319871, Praeger Publishers (2003)

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