Sandra K. Friday
Berriault, Gina.
Women in Their Beds.
Washington D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996.
Contains Berriault's story
Stone Boy.
A young boy goes with his brother to hunt rabbits and to pick peas on their farm. As they are climbing through a fence, his gun accidentally fires, killing his brother. The young boy is so stunned he appears not to react or have any emotions, and everyone including his parents and neighbors think he is a callous, uncaring boy, while what is really going on is profound turmoil and terrible anxiety inside his head and heart. He definitely grows up as the result of this incident.
Canada, Geoffrey.
FistSticksKnifeGun.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Geoffrey Canada tells the harrowing story of his life, growing up in the South Bronx. In particular, the vignette I used from this autobiography deals with when he was five years old and he learned that he had to fight his very best friend or be called a sissy and spend his days inside with his mother.
Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White.
The Film Experience, an Introduction
. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004.
This book gives teachers many practical tools that they and their students can use in viewing films critically. This book lays out a way for students to view, talk about, and write about films they view.
Faulkner, William.
Collected Stories by William Faulkner
. New York: Vintage, 1995. Contains Faulkner's short story
Barn Burning.
A boy must make a profoundly life-altering decision whether to turn in his father for lighting a barn full of horses on fire. It is about where one's loyalty and sense of morality lie, and it is fraught with anxiety that challenges the boy to grow up.
author unknown,
The Greedy Friend
,
The Hartford Courant,
several years ago.
(contact me and I will email you this story.)
A story about two Islamic boys who have been friends, who move to the city to try to make a living. But one, Bata, steals the other's, Anpu's, money and Anpu wants revenge. It is the story of Anpu suffering anxiety and the loss of his money when the cadi, the judge, will not simply render the prescribed punishment in Islamic religious law for stealing, which is to chop off Bata's hands. In the end, Anpu gets his money back and learns an important lesson, and Bata learns a lesson and keeps his hands.
Gutherie, Donna, Nancy Bentley, Kathy Keck Arnsteen.
The Young Author's Do-It-Yourself Book.
Brookfield, CT: The Millbrook Press, 1994.
This marvelous book takes students step –by-step through the process of assembling a storybook.
Marshall, James Vance.
Walkabout
. Littleton, MA: Sundance Publishing, 1959.
An urbane girl and her brother, thirteen and eight respectively, from South Carolina in the 1950's are the only survivors of a plane crash in the Australian Outback. Their survival depends on a chance encounter with a thirteen year-old Aborigine on his walkabout. The southern thirteen year-old girl struggles with the prejudice she has learned back in South Carolina, trying to decide whether to be rescued from certain death by this very dark-skinned, largely naked boy, or whether, terrified that he might rape her, to run for her life.
Tough, Paul. "The Harlem Project."
The New York Times Magazine
, June 20, 2004.
A compelling article about Geoffrey Canada's program to radically change the lives of inner-city kids in Harlem, changing their school experience, their families, and their neighborhoods. . .all at once. Interesting background on Geoffrey Canada.
Films:
Always Outnumbered, Dir. Michael Apted, Palomar Pictures, 1998. ( 104 min. VHS / DVD)
Adapted from a book by the same name by Walter Mosley, the movie is about the relationship between Socrates Fortlow, stunningly played by Lawrence Fishburne, an ex-convict who served 27 years for a double murder, and a twelve year-old boy, Darryl, whose life is taking some dead end turns, where they both live in the Compton section of Los Angeles. Darryl has some very serious issues, with which he must deal, having been present when a bully in his gang killed another boy. Socrates mentors Darryl who has tremendous anxiety and guilt about this and about how to deal with the gang.
Children of Heaven
, Dir. Majid Majidi, Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, 1997.
(88 min. VHS / DVD)
A young Iranian boy, Ali, inadvertently loses his younger sister's only pair of shoes on his way home from the shoe repair shop. This is a charming story of his struggle to find a way to replace the shoes that disappeared under his care. His parents have little on which to subsist therefore purchasing another pair of shoes is out of the question, and because his father is very strict, even telling him will result in a beating for both Ali and his sister. The two are quite inventive in the way that they try to resolve the dilemma.
Finding Forrester,
Dir. Gus Van Sant, Columbia Pictures, 2000. (133 min. VHS / DVD)
The movie is based on the unlikely relationship between a hip, urban, African American teen-age boy with a penchant for basketball and writing, and a reclusive, sixties-something Euro-American, Pulitzer Prize winning writer who becomes the former's mentor, but not without tremendous tension, mistrust, and several layers of anxiety on both sides. Although one is a teen-age boy and one is a sixty-something year-old man, they both grow from their relationship.
Into the West,
Dir. Mike Newell, Miramax Films, 1992. (97 min. VHS / DVD)
Accused of a crime of stealing a horse that actually adopted them, two young brothers with their roots in the country, ride on their "magical white horse," out of Dublin, Ireland, across the country and into the West, in an all-out effort to save their horse from being claimed and taken by a wealthy, sinister, Irish business man who wants it for its amazing jumping skills. The pursuit is hot, the boys' father (Gabriel Burn) and members of a gypsy group that the father, boys and their deceased mother were part members of, help search for the illusive boys and horse. The boys suffer through tremendous anxiety worrying whether they will be caught and lose their beloved white horse.
King of Masks,
Dir. Tian-Ming Wu, Shaw Brothers, 1996. (101 minutes VHS / DVD)
Wang, an aging street performer skilled at switching masks instantaneously, wants to pass his craft on to a male heir before he dies, but unfortunately he has no children. On the black market, he buys an eight year-old boy (apparently a practice in the China of 1930's) and in a short time they bond and Wang treats him like a son. All is well until Wang discovers to his horror that his boy is actually a
girl
, and he abandons her. This is the tender, suspenseful story of "Doggie," the name he has given the "boy,"confronting the anxiety of abandonment by the old man, when she has been bought and sold on the black market, already, as many times as she is old.
Rabbit-proof Fence,
Dir. Phillip Noyce, Australian Film Commission, 2002. (94 min. VHS / DVD)
In 1931, three interracial Aborigine girls escape from an internment camp where they had been taken against their will to be taught how to be domestics. The movie is the story of their sheer determination in the face of horrific obstacles to walk 1,200 miles back home, following a fence that goes right through the tiny village where they live with their mother and grandmother
Walkabout
, Dir. Nicolas Roeg, 20th Century Fox, 1971. (100 min. VHS / DVD)
Based on a novella by James Vance Marshall, two urban Australian children, abandoned in the Australian Outback, meet up with an Aborigine on his walkabout, his rite of passage. While the survival of the two children depend upon the Aborigine, the 13 year-old girl is terrified of the 14 year-old Aborigine boy and her anxiety causes her to nearly abandon him several times, which would mean death for her and her brother. The Aborigine boy has his own anxieties about the fear that he senses in Mary, and in the end, while he is able to aim them towards a way out, he dies. Because he hangs himself in a tree, I do not recommend this for any student younger than ninth grade.
Whale Rider,
Dir. Niki Caro, New Zealand Film Commission, 2002. (94 min. VHS / DVD)
A young Maori girl, Paikea, struggles to fulfill her destiny to become the chief of her Maori tribe in New Zealand, against the wishes of her grandfather and against a long tradition of male chieftains. Her anxiety levels rise as one obstacle after another is thrown in her way, but with the heart and resolve of a chief, she overcomes them one by one.
