We readers of novels and short stories often rush through a text to the ending to see how the story “turns out,” but with coming-of-age books, we are more willing to focus on the main character’s journey, asking ourselves, “Does this seem realistic? Was this the way I felt as I was growing up?” Coming-of-age stories often feel like memoirs perhaps because an author’s life can’t help seeping into writing. How do we categorize such texts? Fictionalized autobiography? Historical fiction? Novelistic nonfiction? This is the kind of novel/short story we’ll be reading in this course.
Activities/assignments:
- Reading notes
- two mid-term exams, a final exam
- three essays (that have received comments from draft response groups)
- and two writing conferences with the instructor.
Texts include:
- DURING THE REIGN OF THE QUEEN OF PERSIA (Chase)
- THE GREAT GATSBY (Fitzgerald)
- HOUSE ON MANGO STREET (Cisneros)
- A SEPARATE PEACE (Knowles)
- THE READER (Schlink)
- THIS BOY’S LIFE (Wolff)
- 2006 GREAT AMERICAN SHORT STORIES anthology
(all available at Revolution Books)