World Literature Independent Reading ProjectKostDue: The week of December 16, 2013

Task You will be choosing a novel of cultural and

historical relevance. You will be reading the book independently

over the next few weeks and then creating a Power Point or Prezi presentation which will be presented to the class.

There will also be a written component to the project in which you will analyze the novel’s cultural and historical relevance.

Common Core Standards CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2 Determine

a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.6 Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature.

Choices You will choose your novel from

a list I have composed for you. You will have the opportunity

to go to the library and check out one of the novels on Friday.

As you view the Power Point, take notes on the novels that interest you.

George Orwell

As readers witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, they begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organization—and in the most charismatic leaders, the souls of the cruelest oppressors.

Erich Maria Remarque

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Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive.

Charlotte Bronte

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Jane Eyre is the story of a small, intelligent, and passionate English orphan. Jane is abused by her aunt and cousin and then attends a harsh charity school. Through it all she remains strong and determinedly refuses to allow a cruel world to crush her independence or her strength of will.

Rudolfo Anaya

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Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past-a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America.

Ly Ly HayslipClick icon to add pictureThis is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down. The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in Ky La, her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children.

Richard WrightClick icon to add picture

An autobiography by Richard Wright, published in 1945. Black Boy describes vividly Wright's often harsh, hardscrabble boyhood and youth in rural Mississippi and in Memphis, Tennessee. When the work was first published, many white critics viewed Black Boy primarily as an attack on racist Southern white society.

Khaled HosseiniClick icon to add picture

The heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan, a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

Amy TanClick icon to add picture

Told from alternating perspectives and voices, the Joy Luck Club is a story of mothers and daughters and the tragedies they endure. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.

Harper LeeClick icon to add picture

Set deep in the Depression-era South of the 1930s, the story covers three years in the life of young Jean-Louise “Scout” Finch and her brother Jem… three years marked by the arrest and trial of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely charged with the rape of a white girl.

Le Thi Diem ThuyClick icon to add picture

In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.

B. Deng, A Deng, B. AjakClick icon to add picture The memoir was written by three cousins who survived the brutal civil war that has been taking place in Sudan for the last twenty years. Brothers Alepho and Benson Deng, along with their cousin Ben Ajak, recall their heartwarming stories . The memoir took place in Sudan during the late eighties and early nineties. The characters all lived peaceful lives in Sudan's lush southern region. Yet, when Government troops invade their villages, raping and killing even the most innocent women and children, the boys are forced to flee. With their parents gone and no one to look out for them, each child must learn to survive on their own before their seventh birthday.

Process and Final ProductsOnce you have selected your novel, I will ask you to assign yourself reading due dates and deadlines.

You will submit a thesis statement to me in which you describe the focus of your essay. The essay should analyze how the author’s or a character’s point of view and/or cultural experience shapes the novel as a whole.

You will also present your analysis to the class in a short Power Point or Prezi.

Reflection When is this due? Is this a big part of your grade? What novel are you most interested in?