Yolanda U. Trapp
TIME: For one passage selected: a week.
For the whole book: three weeks.
SUBJECT
AREA: Language Arts (comprehension, vocabulary, oral and written exercises, questionnaire).
THEME: Novel written as magical reality or realism. Classified as imagination and fiction.
OBJECTIVE: At the end of the lesson or mini-unit the student will be able to:
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a) Understand a variety of texts about the Spanish speaking Latin Americas.
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b) Express doubt-uncertainty, and improbability.
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c) Talk about the world of the imagination and unreality.
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d) Talk about conditions contrary to fact.
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e) Support student opinions.
TITLE:
The House of the Spirits
AUTHOR: Isabel Allende (Chile)
Personal Note:
I met her when she was a journalist in Chile (1970), and I was the Public Relations Director of LAN Chile Airlines. It was a brief encounter when she invited me to her house for an interview but in some way knowing her changed my life. We struggled all the years of the dictatorship in Chile and both decided to exile and leave the country we loved so much. Decision taken in separate way but coincidentally at the same time. She went first to Caracas, Venezuela where she begun to write her first novel:
La Casa de los Esp’ritus
(1981)
The House of the Spirits.
Now, she lives in San Francisco, California, where she settled down with her family. Later, I came to the USA following my dream of independence leaving behind everything. Losing all material and spiritual belongings. I know her, she has been my inspiration. I followed her struggles, her pain, her triumphs. Most of all, I feel proud to belong to the same soil, the same roots. This belonging makes us equal.
This is a homage to her talent, to her triumph. To introduce her novels, short stories in the Curriculum Unit for the Spanish and English speaking students in New Haven, Connecticut.