World Cultures Literature Circles

1. World CulturesLiterature Circles

2. Before We Were Young • Dominican Republic: 1960s • It is the 1960's and the Dominican Republic is ruled by a dictatorship. Twelve year old Anita watches as one by one her aunts, uncles, cousins and sister leave for America. Slowly she starts to understand what is happening as she finds out that her family is involved with an underground movement to overthrow the dictator General Trujillo. When their home is raided and the body of the assassinated dictator is found in the trunk of one of the cars her father and brother are hauled away. Quickly she and her mother must flee. Will they be rescued? Will they make it to America and what will become of Anita's brother and father?

3. Tasting the Sky • Palestine: 1967 • Tasting the Sky recalls the Barakat family’s flight during the Six-Days War and their life over the next four years, but this is not a book about the atrocities of war. As an adult journalist, painfully aware of all that she lost in Palestine, Ibtisam also knows how little accurate information Americans have about the Arab/Israeli conflict. But Tasting the Sky is less about facts and dates than it is a respectful and beautiful memoir. Barakat describes her childhood in one of the most violently politicized parts of the world not with politics, but poetry.

4. The Joy Luck Club • China: 1949; America: 1980s • Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. 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. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

5. The Count of Monte Cristo • Napoleonic France: 1844 • Imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Edmond Dantès spends fourteen bitter years in a dungeon. When his daring escape plan works he uses all he has learnt during his incarceration to mastermind an elaborate plan of revenge that will bring punishment to those he holds responsible for his fate. No longer the naïve sailor who disappeared into the dark fortress all those years ago, he reinvents himself as the charming, mysterious and powerful Count of Monte Cristo...