English 1114--Comp II

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1114 Options for "B," the Required 2nd Course Reading                 This page lists the second book required in this course and describes it in more detail.  Choose one book from the following list, below.  Please look over all of these directions --and see the titles on the entire list--before you choose.  (You may, if you wish, continue to use the book you started, or switch to the other starting book.)           2nd Required Reading in Eng 1114, Spring 2018 (8-17) Directions: For your second reading book in Eng 1114, you may choose to read another one of the books in the required list of choices in our "Textbooks & Readings" web page. Or you may choose from one of these many books below. (Choose early! Some of the books are available in the bookstore -- just a few copies each -- and others will have to be found in the IHCC or other libraries or ordered online.) To see full descriptions of the first eight books from which you chose, you may either return to the "Textbooks & Readings" web page, or read their repeated descriptions below. Here are the steps to use in choosing your book: There are seven sections on the long list below, each with a general subject inside of an orange box. These seven are:        A. GENERAL BOOKS ON WOMEN AS     2ND-CLASS HUMAN BEINGS B. SLAVERY C. WOMEN IN WW II HOLOCAUST D. WOMEN AND OTHER GENOCIDES E. WOMEN IN THIRD-WORLD COUNTRIES F. AFRICAN FEMALE GENITAL     MUTILATION/CIRCUMCISION G. CHOOSE YOUR OWN OPTION            Scroll down to choose one of these seven subject areas. Then look at the list of books shown there. Which ones most interest you? You may want to look in several different subject areas before making a choice. Most books have some kind of info about how/where to buy it and what its reading assignment is. For the book you choose, be sure to pay attention to this info!  Get your book as soon as possible, especially if you order online or through a library: it may take 2-3 weeks to receive your order.    As a reminder, you are allowed to continue reading any of the first eight reading books. Or you may choose to read a book not on either list -- in which case you should see section "G. Choose Your Own Option. --- A. GENERAL BOOKS ON WOMEN AS 2ND-CLASS HUMAN BEINGS:   Children and War edited by James Marten.  Available in large (trade) paperbound.  313 pp., 2002.  New York Univ. Press.   Reading Level: College.  The wide, tall paper-bound   ("trade" size)  is cheaper.  IHCC Bookstore: 2 copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: This is a rigorous, interesting, and well researched set of nineteen essays about various aspects of children and war, each by a different author.  According to Google Book Search, the book “shows that boys and girls have routinely contributed to home front war efforts, armies have accepted under-aged soldiers for centuries, and war-time experiences have always affected the ways in which grown-up children of war perceive themselves and their societies.  The essays in this collection range from explorations of childhood during the American Revolution and of the writings of free black children during the Civil War to children's home front war efforts during World War II, representations of war and defeat in Japanese children's magazines, and growing up in war-torn Liberia. Children and War provides a historical context for two centuries of children's multi-faceted involvement with war.”  Reading Assignment: This is a somewhat academic book, but the essays are relatively short.  Choose two or three essays per week – about 20-30 pp. per week.  Please read ONLY on chapters applying to girls, or to girls and boys equally.. ---     Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein This book was a Time magazine Top-Ten Book of the Year. It is at a  college level of reading, and perhaps is the most difficult of the books on this list to read--primarily because it is research oriented. However, it does also have a great many stories of young women in it. If the subject interests you, it's worth the work. Amazon.com says, "Drawing on in-depth interviews with over seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls’ sex lives in the modern world. While the media has focused—often to sensational effect—on the rise of casual sex and the prevalence of rape on campus, in Girls and Sex Peggy Orenstein brings much more to the table. She examines the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people’s lives; what it means to be the “the perfect slut” and why many girls scorn virginity; the complicated terrain of hookup culture and the unfortunate realities surrounding assault."  (See beginning at Girls and Sex.) Reading Assignment: This requires concentration, so read about 25-30 pp. per week. Choose any chapter or chapters that interest you--feel free to jump around in it. ---   The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang (now of Minnesota).  Reading Level: H.S.-Lower College.  The wide, tall paper-bound ("trade" size) is reasonably priced.  IHCC Library: 1 or more copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Most in Minnesota will have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: It is hard to decide whether this autobiography should be placed in this category or in the “Women in Third World Countries” section because Kao’s book bridges two world—being poor in her Hmong village and refugee camp in Southeast Asia, and being poor as a schoolgirl and teenager in St. Paul, Minnesota.  In addition, she now speaks from a middle class American perspective, as she has now graduated from the prestigious Carleton College in Minnesota and the even more prestigious and famous Columbia University in New York.  According to foxcitiesbookfestival.org, Kao was “born in the Ban Vinai Thai Refugee Camp in 1980, and then at the age of seven came with her family to the U.S. She grew up in St. Paul, where she learned to live in two worlds yet remain distinctly Hmong….  The Latehomecomer is one of the first memoirs by a Hmong writer released with national distribution by a literary press."  The story is vibrant—interesting, well told, and moving in places.  Reading Assignment:  This is not a difficult book to read, so choose any 35-40 pp. per week. ---   Lucky by Alice Sebold In this relatively easy-to-read (but sometimes painful, sad, and angry) nonfiction book, Sebold describes her own rape and recovery.  Reviewers call it "inspirational," even "exhilarating," "ironic" and "nervy" (Francine Prose, Elle magazine); "stunningly crafted and unsparing" (Kirkus Reviews); and "gruesome and strangely enchanting" (Newsday).  Newsday adds, "The quiet achievement of Sebold's memoir of her rape as a college freshman is that she handles her subject with the integrity of a journalist and the care of a survivor." (See the beginning at Lucky.) Warning: If you have gone through something like this yourself, you may not want to read this book—reading it may be too painful or depressing, and/or you may find it too difficult to work with it repeatedly by researching the subject and book. Reading Assignment: This book is 243 pp. long and reads easily, like a story.  Simply choose any 35-40 pp. each week. ---   Nickel and Dimed—On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich This nonfiction book is about a female journalist trying to live on low-paying jobs across America to see what it is like. It highlights how America’s poor are not getting by on their low-paying jobs, especially when it comes to poor women--of any color. The author “moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson” and “soon discovered that even the lowliest” occupations require exhaustive mental and physical efforts.  And one job is not enough…if you intend to live indoors.”  The book “reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity.”  The New York Times Book Review says, We have [this author] to thank for bringing us the news of America’s working poor so clearly…” (Back cover of book). See the beginning at Nickel and Dimed.) Reading Assignment: Read the introduction. Then simply choose any 30-35 pp. each week of reading.  (If you wish, you are welcome to start with the introduction and then read part or all of the Minnesota section first, pp. 121-191).  Reading Assignment: Read the introduction.  Then simply choose any 30-35 pp. each week of reading.  (If you wish, you are welcome to start with the introduction and then read part or all of the Minnesota section first, pp. 121-191).  ---   Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict by Janie Leatherman.  Reading Level: Upper College and Graduate School.  Polity Press, 2011.  244 pp. with index.  IHCC Bookstore: 1 copy available.  Libraries in General: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: The Journal of Women, Politics and Policy says, "Because of its clear and accessible style, gripping content, and intersectional focus, this book should be required reading for scholars and policy-makers as well as students in a number of different areas. While it seems targeted at peace and conflict courses, it would also be excellent in gender studies (clearly introducing gender in the context of armed conflict), human rights (highlighting women's human rights), and international relations generally, (addressing the 'new wars')." The Journal of the American Medical Association says, "Using richly detailed case studies, Janie Leatherman's Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict presents an important examination of sexual violence in conflict and suggests new ways of conceptualizing and understanding the complex causes and implications of such violence." Valentine Moghadam, Purdue University,  says, "This is international relations at its best. Conceptually sophisticated, Janie Leatherman's book elucidates the factors that lie behind sexual violence in armed conflict: inequalities, structural injustices, and hyper-masculinity. I recommend it highly."  Reading Assignment: Briefly glance at the Table of Contents, the “Abbreviations” on pp. x-xii, and the “Index” starting on p. 225.  Then simply choose any 20-25 pp. each week of reading.  Each chapter can be read as a separate, independent essay.  ---   Sisters Listening to Sisters by Peggy Andrews.  Reading Level: Upper H.S.-Lower College. Publisher: Bergin & Garvey.The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: none.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: a few may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Publisher: Bergin & Garvey.  185 pp.      Description: The subtitle of this book is "Women of the World Share Stories of Personal Empowerment."  It has sections on empowerment in the areas of economics, politics, body and self, and religions.  Each section starts with a chapter introducing the subject and then has four more chapters telling real stories of women from four geographical areas: Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States.   Reading Assignment: Read any chapters you’d like, about 20-25 pp. per week. ---       Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery by Patricia Weaver Francisco.  Reading Level: Upper H.S.-Lower College. Publisher: Cliff Street Book/HarperPerennial.  The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: several copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some will have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Patricia Weaver Francisco's book describes her own rape in Minneapolis and her recovery.  Like any survivor of profound violence--she was changed forever.  Weaver, a popular Twin Cities literary and children's author with a family of her own, moves back and forth between the past and the present, seeking to understand and account for what was done to her over one infinitely long nighttime, and how she responded.  It is one of the most personal, real, and direct accounts available by a rape survivor. (Warning: If you have gone through something like this yourself, you may not want to read this book—reading it may be too painful and may make it too difficult to finish it or write about the subject objectively.)    Reading Assignment: This book is 222 pp. long and reads easily, like a story.  Simply choose any 35-40 pp. each week. ---   The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, 317 pp. with Index, hardcover.  IHCC Bookstore: No copies available.  Libraries: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: It's new, so copies are in the $20+ range, and add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: The New York Times Book Review calls this a fascinating journey along the latitude line" of the tenth parallel "in Africa and Asia where Christianity and Islam often meet and clash....  [F]our-fifths of Muslims live" outside of the Middle East.  The book is "an intimate introduction to some of those who live in places like Nigeria, Sudan, [and] Somalia...."  Reading Assignment: Choose any 20-25 pp. each week. ---   B. MODERN WOMEN IN SLAVERY:   Gaddafi's Harem by Annick Cojean. Reading Level: Soph.-Jun. in H.S.  Paper/Trade: $13.00 new.  IHCC Bookstore: 0 copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Many libraries in particular will have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Gaddafi's Harem is the story in her own voice of a 15-year old who attracts the attention of the dictator of Libya, who then orders her family to send her to his harem. The harem is a secret to the Western world, and the practices to which he subjects his many harem girls and young women are often horrifying. Gaddafi, a sponsor of a U.S.-recognized terrorist country, Libya, for many years, was a madman, insane and power hungry, and this autobiography shows the depths to which he sank in his private bedroom with his harem slaves. The book has been an international bestseller and winner of international book awards. Publisher's Weekly calls the story "another level of monstrousness in the recently overthrown dictatorship of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi,...a moving and disturbing wake-up call to the personal costs of totalitarianism." Reading Assignment: Read the Prologue.  Then simply choose any 30-35 pp. each week of reading.   ---   girl soldier by Faith J.H. McDonnell and Grace Akallo. Large paperbound trade book.         This book is about a girl who is kidnapped from a convent and forced to become a child soldier.  The chapters alternate, in turn, between background info of the political situation in Uganda at that time, and the story as told by the girl herself, Grace, when she is older and has escaped her captors.  There is Christian commentary in places; however, whether readers are Christian or not, the background and Grace's stories are accurate retellings of the horribly violent and infamous Congolese-Ugandan "Lord's Resistance Army" (LRA) of mostly child soldiers led by its insane commander, Joseph Kony.  Kony, for close to two decades, has variously styled himself a spokesperson for God, the reincarnation of Jesus, and a medium for thirteen spirits.  He has been responsible for creating over 60,000 child soldiers and sex slaves and the displacement of over a million Africans from their villages.  Reading Assignment--this is easy reading, and about 15% of the book is pictures and white space on pages, so read the following: 1st wk.: pp. 5-51 and carefully examine the map; 2nd wk.:, pp. 52-100; 3rd wk.: 100-148; 4th wk.: 148-195. (Pp. 196-226 are call-to-action/advocacy pages that are not required but may be read as extra credit.) ---   Princess—A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Windsor-Brooke Books, 2004.  IHCC Bookstore: 1-2 copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: most larger ones should have a copy.  Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. Description: Princess, named as one of “500 Great Books by Women,” was a New York Times bestseller.  People magazine calls it “absolutely riveting and profoundly sad,” Entertainment Weekly calls it “a chilling story” and “a vivid account of an air-conditioned nightmare,” and USA Today says it is “must-reading for anyone interested in human rights.”  The author lived in Saudi Arabia for years and met a Saudi royal, Princess sultana Al-Sa’ud, who wanted her story told to Westerners.  The Princess, born into an extremely wealthy family, had almost no personal freedoms.  The author says that despite the Princess’ “outward charm and gaiety, [she] was a woman…inwardly seething at her inability to control her own life.” Reading Assignment, Simply choose any 35-40 pp. each week. ---   Slave Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis This is a h.s. reading-level true story of a very poor, third-world, African child, Nazer, who tells her story to Lewis. Nazer was, as a young teenager, stolen from her North African mountain village and sold as a slave, all in very recent times. This all happens in today's Middle East, and Nazer even was a slave for the last few years in the very modern, major European city of London. She proves she is bright and resourceful by finally escaping her slave-owning family and finding some justice--and the need for a lot of growth--after her many years of captivity. (See beginning at Slave.) Reading Assignment: This is easy reading, so read about 35-40 pages a week. Start at the very beginning, but feel free to skip forward to the slave raiders' raid on the village, if you wish, to get to the "good parts" sooner.  You may also skip/skim forward to other parts that you find more interesting, as the book is too long to finish in three-four weeks at 40 pp./wk. ---   The Slave Next Door by Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter.  Reading Level: College. (U. Cal. Press, hardcover, 2009.  268 pp. plus an appendix, notes, and index.  IHCC Bookstore: None.  Larger Libraries and Bookstores in General: Larger libraries may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Most Americans do not know that there are tens of thousands of enslaved people in America right now.  Some of them are the infamous immigrant sex slaves about which TV has talked.  However, many of them are American-born sex slaves, and many others are immigrant farm workers held in terrible situations.  The book is informative if somewhat repetitive at times, with easy-to-choose-from chapters on different forms of American slavery.  Reading Assignment: Read about 25-35 pp. per week only in chapters relating to women, or women and men equally. ---   Other Books about Modern Slavery: Note: These next three books are not ones I have reviewed but are highly recommended by Greg Rucka in his well-written novel about this subject, Walking Dead.  - A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner. Rucka says it "reveals one of the greatest evils of our time, and our failings in combating it.'  - Human Trafficking, Human Security, and the Balkans by H. Richard Friman and Simon Reich.  - Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales. Rucka calls it a "remarkable book." ---   C. WOMEN IN WW II HOLOCAUST:         Children of the Flames by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Publisher: Penguin. The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.   Description: This book is about infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who ran horrible experiments on Jews in the concentration camp Auschwitz, such as making them stand in freezing water, cutting out their body organs to see how long it took them to die, and tortures even worse.  The book is a nonfiction recounting in story form of Mengele and his experiments with twins by a journalist who interviewed countless subjects and by the wife of one such subject.  It exposes the so-called “scientific” research by Nazis on concentration camp inmates not only as inhumane but also ineffective and poorly done.  Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the eight pp. of pictures in the middle and glance at the “Dramatis Personae”—list of people in the book—on pp. 19-22.  Then see the “Contents” on p. 17 and read as follows: Don’t read the “Preface” (unless it’s on your own time).  Wk. 1: “Prologue”-Chap. 1.  Wk. 2: Chap. 2.  Wk. 3: Chap. 3.  Wk. 4: Chap. 4.  ---   Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyel.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Publisher: Academy Chicago.  The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size  is cheapest.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Lengyel’s book, subtitled “A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz,” is about how she, a young, beautiful wife of a hospital director, survived after her family was killed and she was interned in Birchenau and Auschwitz, two of the most famous Nazi concentration camps.  The New Yorker calls it a surprisingly dispassionate account of life in the Nazi murder camps…and the mentality of the persons who administered it.”  Other reviewers on the cover call the book “a stark account…vividly articulated,” “a picture of utter hell,” and “passionate, tormenting.” Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the “Glossary” in the very back.  Then read as follows.  First Week: Chapters I-II.  Second Week: Chapters III-VI.  Third Week: Chapters VII-X.  (Fourth Week: Chapters XI-XV.) ---   Hiding in the Open by Sabina Zimering.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Publishers: North Star Press. The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Zimering was a practicing doctor for forty-two years in Minneapolis until her retirement.  She has given a speech at IHCC and talked with some of our English students afterward, as well.  Before, she was a teenager and Jew during World War II who escaped the Holocaust by pretending to be an orphaned Polish Catholic girl.  She and her sister moved through parts of Europe, including Germany itself, successfully avoiding capture for six years.  Her story, while lacking the horror of being in a concentration camp herself, is a vivid story of what it was like to secretly be a hated, supposedly subhuman person successfully masquerading each day as a thoughtful, pretty, "master race" girl.  This book may also be more interesting to some because it is by a Minnesotan, a woman, and an obviously intelligent person who was a practicing physician for many years. Reading Assignment: This is not a difficult book to read. Simply choose any 35-40 pp. each week. ----   I Am a Star—Child of the Holocaust by Inge Auerbacher.  Reading Level: Ages 8-12.  Puffin Book, 1993. IHCC Bookstore: several copies.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.   Description: I Am a Star won a Merit of Educational Distinction for its story aimed at young readers.  According to Amazon.com, “Inga Auerbacher's childhood was as happy and peaceful as any other German child's--until 1942 [when] she and her parents were…sent to a concentration camp. The Auerbachers defied death for three years until they were freed.  The back cover of the Puffin edition says, “The Nazis tried to destroy Inge’s life—but they could not break her spirit.  Inge Auerbacher’s childhood was as happy and peaceful as any other German child’s—until 1942. [B]ecause Inge’s family was Jewish, [they] were sent to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.  The Auerbachers defied death for three years, and were finally freed in 1945.  …Auerbacher tells her family’s harrowing story—and how they carried with them ever after the strength and courage of will that allowed them to survive.”  Reading Assignment: This is a young reader’s book, easy to read, so it is only good for two weeks’ worth of reading: the first reading, do the first half of the book; the second reading, do the second half of the book.  It is included here because in 2013-14, Auerbacher was a speaker at Inver Hills College. ---   The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival by Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Publisher: Berkley. The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size  is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies. Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: As teenagers, Sara (known then as “Seren”), her sister, and her friends were taken to Ravensbruck concentration camp, the only Jewish girls there in a Gentile (non-Jewish) women’s prison camp where many died.  Library Journal calls this account “unpretentious” and “vivid,” and Booklist says, “This compelling saga is told in a warm and heartfelt manner.”  The book is an account of all of Bernstein’s war years, moving here and there, often working for Nazis as a seamstress.  The assignments below cover primarily her period in the concentration camp.  Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the picture on p. 1, the two maps just before it, and the picture on p. 71.  Then read as follows: Wk. 1: pp. 195-233.  Wk. 2: pp. 234-264.  Wk. 3: pp. 265-294 (or any other 30 pp.).  Wk. 4: pp. 295-328 (or any other 30 pp.).  ---   D. WOMEN AND OTHER GENOCIDES:   First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Publisher: Harper. The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: 1-2 copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Many have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: The Denver Post calls this “an important book…a harrowing book, a book you will read through tears.”  In the late 1970’s, after the end of the War in Vietnam, in next-door Cambodia the ruling party killed about  two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the population, in one of the most extensive genocides of modern times.  Ung recounts her story of those years, starting from age five when she and her family lived in the capital and her father was a privileged, high-ranking government official.  Ung’s family had to flee and disperse with the arrival of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army.  Ung was trained as a child soldier, and her siblings were sent to labor camps.  Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the picture on the back cover; the Author’s Note, p. xi; the Family Chart, p. xiii; Map, p. xv; and pictures, pp. 110-111.  Then read any 25 pp./wk. ---    The Devil Came on Horseback - Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace.  Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  230 pp. BBS Public Affairs. The hardbound is the edition I have; perhaps by now a paper-bound  (either in "trade" size or paperback) is available.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies available.  Open circulation at IHCC Library: 1 copy. Libraries and Bookstores in General: many will have it.  Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: This 2007 book and the documentary movie based on it (which you might also want to watch for extra credit—if you get it, watch it before starting the book, if possible), along with Steidle himself, touring the country to talk about it, have stunned many thousands of people.  His sister helped him write it, and indeed, much of the genocide shown in this book is against women and children.  Genocide continues there now, and there is little that other countries have been able to do to stop it.  Steidle, a former Marine Corps Captain, was hired after he got out of the Marines to observe the crisis in Darfur.  He was taken aback by what he found, saw, and was allowed to photograph.  The book comes with 20 photographs.  And an excellent documentary film by Steidle shows much more.  Reading Assignment: Start with the 7-page "Prologue."  Then you should pretty much read it in order, though you can skip over some sections, if you like.  The book is basically a narrative of his time in Darfur, step by step, and reads like a journal or diary, so it is not difficult to follow.  Please read about 30 pp. per week.    ---   "A Problem from Hell" - America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power.  Reading Level: High College/Grad. School.  620 pp. with an Index.  Publisher: Harper Perennial.  The wide, tall paperbound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: 2 copies available.  Open circulation at IHCC Library: 2 copies. Libraries and Bookstores in General: Almost all have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description (Strongly Recommended): This 2002 book has won so many awards that just listing them would take too much space.  The most prestigious is the Pulitzer Prize (the top U.S. journalism award) for the best nonfiction book of the year.  Power, a foreign policy columnist at Time magazine and a professor at Harvard, traveled the world researching how genocide develops and why the United States has chosen not to intervene in the first part of every single genocide in the past 100 years.  Her prose is vivid, her style insistent, and her facts overwhelming.   Reading Assignment: Start with the 11-page "Preface."  Each chapter is about a different genocide in history and in various parts of the world.  It is okay to skip around, choosing different chapters in any order you want.  Read a total of about 20-25 pp. per week.  ---   The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. Reading Level: Low-Medium College.  Penguin, 1997.  The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: 2-3 copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: many have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: This book by a female Chinese-American researcher is sensitive to both female and male suffering in the historically famous rape of Nanking, china.  .  Richard Rhodes' review in the New York Times calls this "a powerful, landmark book, rivteting in its horror."  In 1937, the Japanese army invated Nankin and, in a matter of weeks, systematically raped, tortured, and killed 300,000 Chinese, primarily civilians.  This book tells the story from three different points of view: the Japanese, the Cinese, and some Westerners who helped save another 300,000 people from similar fates.  The book is very carefully researched yet gripping in its details as it explores the Japanese militaristic culture that allowed such brutality, the culture of the people of Nanking, and the heroic efforts by such people as German John Rape, who some call the "Oskar Schindler of China." Reading Assignment: This is a longer book, though relatively easy to read.  The first week, read pp. 1-22 (Prologue-Chapter 1).  After that, choose any 30 pp. to read each week for two more weeks.  ---   The Specter of Genocide - Mass Murder in Historical Perspective edited by Gellately and Kiernan.  Reading Level: Low-Medium College.  Publisher: Cambridge UP.  The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: none.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Specter is a scholarly collection of interesting, well written, and intelligent academic essays attempting to define genocide culturally, politically, and socially.  It is an excellent resource for papers written on genocide, with some essays discussing individual genocides in history and others looking at several or more.  There are seventeen separate essays with bibliographies and a well done appendix for looking up good quotations for research papers.  To see the list of individual essays in the "Table of Contents" and list of subjects in the "Appendix," go to www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521527503/ref=sib_dp_ pop_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S009#reader-link.  (Note: If you are in Eng 1114 and you have already read this book in Eng 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term, you cannot use this book now for your second reading in Eng 1114.)  Reading Assignment: Each essay is about 20-25 pp.  Simply choose any one essay each week.  ---      E. WOMEN IN THIRD-WORLD COUNTRIES:     Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland.  Reading level: H.S.  Annick Press Ltd., 2008, 216 pp.  IHCC Bookstore: none.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: This is a very upbeat book, considering the author lost her arms in civil war.  Review from School Library Journal: "Starred Review. Grade 9 Up—Kamara's account of the atrocities she suffered at the hands of rebel soldiers in Sierra Leone is both harrowing and hopeful. The young woman [11 years old] had a typical childhood in her small rural village until she came face to face with rebels.... [O]ne soldier chopped off...her hands...and left her for dead. [S]he found her way to a nearby hospital where she was reunited with her surviving family members. There, the 12-year-old discovered she was pregnant and was reduced to begging in the streets to keep herself and her son alive. When journalists arrived to document the horrors of life in her country...being featured in their stories led to benefactors wanting to find a way to take her to a country where she could heal.... After landing in Canada, Kamara found a...surrogate family who encouraged her not only to obtain an education, but also to share her story with the world. Her narrative is honest, raw, and powerful. [T]he book sheds light on a plight of which many people are still unaware.—Kelly McGorray, Glenbard South High School Library, Glen Ellyn, IL."   Reading Assignment: Simply choose any 35-40 pp. each week. ---   Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front [RUF] by Myriam S. Denov. Reading Level: Mid- to Upper College.  Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010, 234 pp. with an index.  IHCC Bookstore: 1 copy available.  Libraries: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: It's new, so copies are in the $20 range, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. Description: This sociological and psychological portrait of the real lives of child soldiers--from first capture to gradual reintroduction into society--successfully reflects their real experiences.  The author says, "This book explores the lives and realities of a group of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, both boys and girls, and traces what happened to these children during and following the 11-year civil war.  It attempts to fill these silences and empty spaces with children's personal stories and narratives and to put human accounts to the often dehumanizing and pathologizing wartime imagery that we are so accustomed to consuming through the media.... While these children are frequently constructed...as either extreme victims, extreme perpetrators or extreme heroes...in reality, the lives, experiences and identities of these children fall within the messy, ambiguous and paradoxical zones of all three, which proves to be one of the most challenging aspects to contend with in their post-conflict lives..." (1-2).  Reading Assignment: Choose any 20-25 pp. per wk. that are about females, or female-male relationships. ---   "A diamond's journey" (web article, photos, and intro video) at msnbc.msn.com/id/15842546/0.  Reading/listening level: Upper H.S.-Lower College.  Publisher/author: MSNBC.  An approximate one-hour web show with an "Intro" 30-sec. video and eight "chapters," each of which has a photo and a page of text.  Description: This article by MSNBC.com offers an overview of how a diamond starts from often terribly impoverished and even forced-labor and/or child labor conditions through buyers and traders, often in India, to jewelry stores in America and Europe.  This is an excellent, relatively brief introduction to how the diamond business works, both the good and the bad of it.   Reading Assignment: Read this online magazine article to complete one week of assigned reading.   The Devil that Danced on Water: A Daughter's Quest by Aminatta Forna.  Reading Level: Lower to Mid-college.  Publisher: London--HarperCollins, 2002. The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: none.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. Description: This heartbreaking, real-life tragedy from the point of view of a Sierra Leonean woman—a daughter—tells how her father, a popular politician in Sierra Leone, became railroaded by the existing administration in the early decades of Sierra Leone’s independence.  Some people love this book.  It is a way of looking at Sierra Leone from the viewpoint of one of the privileged female members of its own society. Reading Assignment: This is a long book.  Simply choose any 25 pp.each week. ---   Forgotten Girls—Stories of Hope and Courage (Christian perspective) by Kay Strom and Michele Rickett.  Reading Level: Jr. High-H.S. Libraries and Bookstores in General: may not be available.  Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. Description: This book tells the stories of girls from over fifteen mostly third-world countries who were physically or sexually abused, ignored, or otherwise treated poorly, and how many of them were helped.  The book has a large number of interesting and useful stories and facts from a Christian missionary perspective. Reading Assignment, Simply choose any 40-50 pp.each week. ---   Green Oranges (on Lion Mountain) by Dr. Emily Joy ("The Accidental Optimist").  Reading Level: Upper H.S.-Lower College.  Eyes Books, trade paperbound, 2004. 276 with map in begin. and 3 pp. of history, facts, and figures about Sierra Leone at end.  IHCC Bookstore: no copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.  Amazon.com w/credit card: Some copies may be cheaper than the $27 bookstore price, but add $4 for postage; allow 2 wks. Description: In this upbeat book, young Dr. Emily Joy, with a wicked sense of intelligent wit and a becoming lack of egoism, "leaves behind her comfortable life" as a general practitioner in York, England and "heads off for two years to a remote hospital in Sierra Leone.  There she finds...no water, no electricity [and] no amputation saw....  Then the rebels invade!  [Her] problems are tiny compared to those faced by the people of Sierra Leone.  If they can remain so optimistic, then what's [her] excuse?"  A review by the Duchess of York says, "Green Oranges illustrates the tenacity and determination of the people of Sierra Leone."  --Back Cover of Book.  Reading Assignment: This reads quickly, so please read about 30 pp. per week. ---   Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn The authors interview a number of women throughout poor areas of the world. The result is an award-winning series of true stories, chapter by chapter, mixed with discussion about them. The book has an early- to mid-college reading-level. The stories are about injustices that poor, third-world women have had done to them, and how they have survived, recovered, and built new lives helping other women. The authors, who are married, are among the top journalists in the U.S. They have traveled to several countries to find these true-life examples of various women in poverty who have pulled themselves up by their own efforts and with just a little help from outsiders to start. Each chapter tells the story of one to three new women in a different country or continent. (See beginning at Half the Sky.) Reading Assignment: This is a college-level series of essays.  Its stories and discussion are "episodic," meaning the book doesn't have a continuous story like four of the others listed here: each chapter goes to a new location in the world, and new people. Feel free to jump around in it, choosing whatever chapters most interest you: read about 25-30 pages per week. ---   I, Rigoberta Menchu—An South American Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchu, edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. Reading Level: H.S./Low College.  Verso/New Left Books, 1984.  Libraries and Amazon: May be hard to find, but may be low-priced on Amazon (add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.). Description: Rigoberta Menchu is the famous and exemplary female 1992 Nobel Peace Prizewinner from Guatemala, Central America.  She is a Spanish-speaking Native American who, according to translator Ann Wright, is a “ladino”—“a person of mixed race or a Spanish-speaking Indian” in a “system which oppresses the Indian—first under Spanish rule and then under the succession of brutal governments of the landed oligarchy”  (viii). Menchu eventually helped develop freedom and political democracy for her entire country and has become an example to all Central and South Americans, to Central and South American Christian Indians, and to the world.  Reading Assignment, Simply read, from the beginning, about 35-40 pp.each week.  Skipping forward to later parts of the story is allowable after the first week. ---   Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris (Kristina) Holloway.  Reading Level: Mid-Upper H.S. Publisher: Waveland Press.  The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: 1-2 copies available.  3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.                  Description: This 2007 book details Kristina (Kris) Holloway's powerful, interesting story of her two years in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Mali (just north of Sierra Leone) and the wonderful young village midwife, Monique, with whom she worked.  Top reviewers around the U.S. call the book "tender, revelatory" (Publishers Weekly); "as compelling as any novel" (Entertainment Weekly "Pick"); and a "poignant and powerful book" (Kirkus, Starred Review).  Holloway details in interesting, clear prose what it is like to live in a West African village, be in the Peace Corps, and have about the best kind of experience possible in such a situation.  While the ending is tragic, it also is uplifting, making the whole an excellent, heart-warming book.  Reading Assignment: This is a longer book, though relatively easy to read.  Read any 30-40 pp.each week. ---   This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.  Reading Level: Upper H.S.-College.  Publisher: Harper, 2009.  IHCC Bookstore: no copies available.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.  Amazon.com w/credit card: Some copies may be cheaper than the $27 bookstore price, but add $4 for postage; allow 2 wks. Description: This 2009 book tells the story of the first democratically-elected female president of an African country, Dr. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.  Born in Liberia, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison several years ago, went on to a graduate degree at Harvard University, and then became an important financial organizer for the Organization of African States, then the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and finally - after the terrible Liberian civil war (which fostered the Sierra Leonean civil war and ran during the same period of time), she helped reconstruct Liberia.  After two years of reconstruction, she ran for President and was democratically elected in 2006.  She came to the Twin Cities to give a lecture at the University of Minnesota in April 2009 and to receive an honorary doctorate in laws from the University.  This book is her own memoirs, in which she recounts how she rose from impossible poverty and, later, imprisonment during part of the civil war, to ever higher positions of influence and power, from she has been able to work at her lifetime mission, which is, as she herself says it, to help the people of Liberia.  Reading Assignment: This is a longer book, though relatively easy to read.  The first week, read pp. 1-22 (Prologue-Chapter 1).  After that, choose any 30 pp. to read per week.  ---   F. AFRICAN FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION/CIRCUMCISION:     Web Pages on Female Genital Mutilation in Africa: Reading Level: College. Read/skim all 3 Web pages for just one (or if you take a lot of time at it, for two) of your weekly assignments. The book listed below, Warrior Marks, can be read for one, two, or three weeks of readings. Warning: The material sometimes is painful to read and view.  However, female circumcision in most of Africa has a profound, nearly unfathomable--to other parts of the world--affect on African (and recent African-immigrant) culture. This set of readings therefore might be appropriate for future nurses and physicians coming into contact with African immigrants, and it is especially recommended for anyone who may someday counsel African immigrants. FIRST ARE THREE ARTICLES ON FEMALE CIRCUMCISION:  (1) www.fgmnetwork.org/Lightfoot-klein/prisonersofritual.htm.  "Prisoners of Ritual: Some Contemporary Developments in the History of Female Genital Mutilation" by Hanny Lightfoot-Klein. Description: "This paper was presented at the Second International Symposium on Circumcision in San Francisco, April 30-May 3, 1991 .  Female genital circumcision is ubiquitous at all levels of society in many countries of Africa .  It is also practiced, more or less sporadically, in other continents of the world. In Africa alone, along an uninterrupted belt across the center of the continent and along the length of the Nile, an estimated 60-90,000,000 women are circumcised."  (5000 w. conference paper). (2) http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics; 102/1/153.  "Female Genital Mutilation."  American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Bioethics, Policy Statement.  Pediatrics, Vol. 102, No. 1, July 1998, pp. 153-156.  "Abstract": Description: "The traditional custom of ritual cutting and alteration of the genitalia of female infants, girls, and adolescents, referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM), persists primarily in Africa and among certain communities in the Middle East and Asia . Immigrants in the United States from areas where FGM is endemic may have daughters who have undergone a ritual genital procedure or may request that such a procedure be performed by a physician…."  (2000 w. summary.  WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC DRAWINGS).     (3) http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cirm.htm.  (Viewpoint from Islamic beliefs.)  "Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa , the Middle East & Far East " by B.A. Robinson.  Description: "FGM is a social custom, not a religious practice. However, in those Muslim countries where it is practiced, FGM is often justified by a controversial saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed that seems to favor sunna circumcision. The authenticity of this saying is unconfirmed, and some scholars have refuted it.  Even if true, it only permits the practice; it does not mandate it."  (1600 w.)  Reading Assignment: Read all three of these Web articles to complete one week of assigned reading.  -----------   SECOND IS A BOOK ABOUT FEMALE CIRCUMCISION BY ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST FEMALE, AFRICAN-AMERICAN WRITERS: Warrior Marks by Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar.  Reading Level: H.S. (but more suitable for College and Professionals).  Publishers: Hardbound--Scribner's; Softbound--Back Bay Books/Little, Brown. The wide, tall paper-bound ("trade" size)  is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: No copies.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: Some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: Even used copies may be expensive (I paid $30 for mine); add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Description: Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (and the movie made from it, starring Whoopi Goldberg, won a number of awards).  Walker is considered one of our best American novelists and is a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. She has studied the subject of female genital mutilation and, in this nonfiction book, she and journalist Pratibha Parmar make the subject come alive by interviewing women who have been circumcised and the older women who perform the "ritual"--almost always on young girls.  Beware: it is difficult to read some of these materials.   Reading Assignment: This book is 374 pp. long and is about the filming of a documentary video.  The back section has interviews with women involved in female circumcision.   Please read the following:   1st Wk.: See map in front, pictures scattered throughout, and  info and chart on female genitalia pp. on 365-367.  Then read first third of pp. 255-350.  2nd Wk.: Read middle third of pp. 255-350.  3rd Wk.: Read final third of pp. 255-350.   ---- G. CHOOSE YOUR OWN OPTION:                The books above are simply a group of well respected books that I have discovered on the subject of women as victims.  There are many more.  If you would like to suggest a nonfiction book you'd like to read on violence against, or maltreatment of, women, I'm open to your suggestions.  It must be nonfiction and of good quality, directly linked to the subject of women as victims, and at a reading level of upper-H.S. or college.  Please bring it to me and show it to me so that I can see if it fits well enough into the class. Return to top.