{"title":"Great Writers","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"great-writers-steven-king-different-seasons-the-body","title":"Great Writers. Steven King, Different Seasons \"The Body\"","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1977, 352 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans; 91 pages, 42, 292 words\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter re-reading this again, I was surprised to app, and appreciate the \"architecture\" of how Morrison constructs a story--The suicide of a an insurance agent, the birth of an African-American in a hospital nearby, the baby, Macon Dead, grows up and not exactly feeling at home he begins a search of his family, fleeing slavery, and a shocking\u0026amp;nbsp; discovery of himself, and the purifying thrill of Macon's last act--Morrison weaves a story of corruption and epiphany in Song of Solomon.\u0026amp;nbsp; She takes a biblical reference and applies it to the Black diaspora.\u0026amp;nbsp; Truelly, a masterpiece by one of America's greatest writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50264721457368,"sku":"5.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/TheBody.jpg?v=1764711610"},{"product_id":"great-writers-cormac-mccarthy-the-road","title":"Great Writers: Cormac McCarthy, \"The Road\"","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2017, 307 pages, some visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMcCarthy's Pulitzer winning apocalyptic novel, The Road, follows a Father and Son's epiv journey to the Pacific Ocean from American's Destroyed midlands.\u0026amp;nbsp; The world has been destroyed and the wanderers are going through absolutely dangerous and unpredictable abandoned land.\u0026amp;nbsp; They are two survivors, but they meet every kind of villain and a few good men along the way.The ending is a bit controversial--some think the boy, after his father's death, is saved; but a lot of critics says that he has fallen into a cannibal family.\u0026amp;nbsp; McCarthy doesn't promote hope--he's stuck on surviving a cruel and chaotic world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson Plans, Dialectic Journal, 38 pages; 14,558 words, some visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50317263831256,"sku":"","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Cormac_McCarthy.jpg?v=1643668304"},{"product_id":"great-writers-bless-me-ultima-rudolfo-amaya-1","title":"Great Writers, Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Amaya","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the Canon of American Literature, there has to be room for Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima.\u0026amp;nbsp; In the tradition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird, there must be room for a coming of age story from a landscape in New Mexico.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e100% guarantee to work with Hispanics and Americans alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1972; 272 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Si,” I promised.\u003cbr\u003e“Now take the owl, go west into the hills until you find a forked juniper tree, there bury the owl. Go quickly—”\u003cbr\u003e“Grande,” my mother called outside.\u003cbr\u003eI dropped to my knees.\u003cbr\u003e“Bless me, Ultima—” (299)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e68 pages, 26,734 words; some visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50317288374488,"sku":"5.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BlessMeUltimaCover_6a5fd9b2-397a-4b08-9943-b87bc73361a2.jpg?v=1743449909"},{"product_id":"biography-the-great-books-david-denby-year-long-class","title":"Biography: The Great Books, David Denby, Year long class","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 1997, 663 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFALL SEMESTER LITERATURE HUMANITIES\u003cbr\u003eHomer Iliad (Chicago; Lattimore, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eOdyssey (Harper; Lattimore, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eHymn to Demeter Homeric Hymns (Johns Hopkins; Athanassakis, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eSappho Translations by J. V. Cunningham and others Aeschylus Oresteia (Chicago; Lattimore, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eSophocles Oedipus the King (Chicago; Grene, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eAntigone (Chicago; Grene, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eThucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War; selections (Penguin; Warner, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eEuripides Electra (Chicago; Vermeule, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eThe Bacchae (Chicago; Arrowsmith, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eAristophanes The Clouds (Meridian; Arrowsmith, trans.)\u003cbr\u003ePlato Symposium (Hackett; Nehemas and Woodruff, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eApology (Hackett; Grube, trans.) or\u003cbr\u003eThe Republic (Hackett; Grube, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eAristotle The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford; Ross, trans.) The Poetics (Macmillan; Grube, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eVirgil Aeneid (Random House; Fitzgerald, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eThe Bible the Old Testament: Genesis, Job (Meridian; King James or Revised Standard Version)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSECTION I: THE GREEK AND ROMAN WORLD\u003cbr\u003eThucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War; selections (Penguin; Warner, trans.)\u003cbr\u003ePlato The Republic (Penguin; Lee, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eAristotle The Politics (Penguin; Sinclair, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eThe Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford; Ross, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eCicero On the Good Life (Penguin; Grant, trans.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSECTION II: THE SOURCES OF THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Bible the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah\u003cbr\u003eThe New Testament: Matthew, Acts, Romans, James, Revelation (Meridian; Revised Standard Version)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSECTION III: THE MIDDLE AGES\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAugustine City of God; selections (Penguin; Bettenson, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eAquinas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (Norton; Sigmund, trans.)\u003cbr\u003ePizan The Book of the City of Ladies (Persea; Richards, trans.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSECTION IV: RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMachiavelli The Prince (Modern Library; Ricci, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eThe Discourses; selections (Modern Library; Dettmold, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eHillerbrand, ed. The Protestant Reformation (Harper)\u003cbr\u003eCalvin The Institutes (Baker; Lane and Osborne, trans.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSECTION V: THE NEW SCIENCE\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDescartes Discourse on Method (Hackett; Cress, trans.)\u003cbr\u003eGalileo Discoveries and Opinions (Anchor; Drake, trans.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSECTION VI: NEW PHILOSOPHY AND THE POLITY\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHobbes Leviathan; selections (Penguin)\u003cbr\u003eLocke Second Treatise of Government (Hackett)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e78 pages: 31,847 words, Many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50322199052504,"sku":"4.5","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/TheGreatBooks.jpg?v=1743610802"},{"product_id":"biography-the-color-of-water-james-mcbride","title":"Biography: \"The Color of Water,\" James McBride","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 1996, 311 Pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans:87 pages, 41,498 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRuth McBride Jordan\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRuth McBride Jordan was born Rachel Deborah Shilsky (Ruchel Dwajra Zylska) in Poland, in 1921. Her family immigrated to America when she was two, and eventually settled in Suffolk, Virginia. After high school she moved to New York City and married Andrew D. McBride, with whom she founded the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. After her husband’s death in 1957, she remarried, to Hunter Jordan, who died in 1972. She is a 1986 graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received her degree in Social Work Administration at age 65. Today Ruth travels to Paris, London, New York, and Atlanta regularly; works as a volunteer with the Philadelphia Emergency Center, a shelter for homeless teenage mothers; runs a reading club in the Ewing, New Jersey, public library; and works at the Jerusalem Baptist church in Trenton, New Jersey, in their program to feed the homeless. She lives in Ewing township with her daughter Kathy Jordan and Kathy’s two children, Gyasi and Maya. She has twelve children and twenty grandchildren.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I wrote this book for my mother, and her mother, and mothers everywhere.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50322224480472,"sku":"4.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/book-color-of-water.2.jpg?v=1743611941"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-heaven-and-earth-grocery-store-james-mcbride","title":"Book Study: \"The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,\" James McBride","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, published 2024; 400 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson Plans, Dialectic Journal 67 pages, 20,535 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was trying to think through the experience of reading James McBride’s “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,” when suddenly I asked myself this question: \u0026amp;nbsp;“Who is the hero?” \u0026amp;nbsp;and the answer led me to write this little evaluation:\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Malachi the Dancer is the hero. \u0026amp;nbsp;He opens and closes the novel, and he solves a mystery that haunts the head-scratching story. Malachi appears like the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey and his appearance seems to move the story along. He pops up in 1972 as a suspect in a unsolved murder—a skeleton and some jewelry are found in a random grave on Chicken Hill, where he lives in the nearby dilapidated synagogue. The police are investigating and tell Malachi that he’s a suspect. Then, that night, historic Hurricane Agnes \u0026amp;nbsp;wipes out the town; all the buildings are flattened \u0026amp;nbsp;and the skeleton has been washed away. \u0026amp;nbsp;Malachi is gone he next morning. \u0026amp;nbsp;He reappears, in flashbacks, every ten years. \u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Moshe Ludlow could be next the hero. \u0026amp;nbsp;He has the good sense to turn little into plenty. \u0026amp;nbsp;In the 1920s, he takes a confusing, racist advertisement, changes it a little and stages a concert\/dance that attracts a raucous crowd. That makes him a moneyed-man and a respected community leader. \u0026amp;nbsp;He has the good sense to fall in love with the Grocery store’s daughter, propose to her, marry her, and live off her good sense and community love. \u0026amp;nbsp;He’s able to “ride out” with a little patience many social problems that most people find unsolvable. \u0026amp;nbsp;Probably his greatest asset is “hold tight and see what happens.”\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Moshe and Malachi are great friends, beginning in the 1920s. \u0026amp;nbsp;Whenever Malachi is in Pottstown, he charges Moshe to act.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Chona, Moshe’s wife, is the hero. \u0026amp;nbsp;She has a special sense of being able to “read” people. \u0026amp;nbsp;She studies; then she judges. \u0026amp;nbsp;And just when she seems about to conquer, she dies. \u0026amp;nbsp;Her death was the biggest, heaviest wrench thrown by McBride into the story. \u0026amp;nbsp;Her magical powers of “being right” are offset by physical disabilities: she’s had polio but beautiful; she has a wild reputation but was totally correct about her hunches: don’t move out of Chicken Hill, offer credit to all her Black customers; encourage Moshe to turn the former funeral home into his Dance Hall and invite Black Audiences. \u0026amp;nbsp;Also, add the first black entertainer Chick Webb to the mixed audience. \u0026amp;nbsp;Webb is also crippled.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; At the weekly meeting of the Pottstown Association of Negro Men, Nate Timlin, arriving late, learns that a 14-year-old boy, has lost his mother, and has been seen riding a train around Pottstown county. \u0026amp;nbsp;His mother nursed the boy back to life after the home stove blows up. \u0026amp;nbsp;Dodo, the boy, loses his sight and his hearing. \u0026amp;nbsp;Since then, he has recovered his sight. \u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Addie Timlin, Nate’s wife, upset with the men discussing Chona’s illness and the and the rumors about Dodo’s possible commitment to the Pennhurst State Hospital for the Insane and Feeble-minded, gets her husband to hide Dodo in the dank basement of the Dance Hall. When Chona hears about this, insists on transferring Dodo from the Dance Hall to the Grocery Store. \u0026amp;nbsp;The Dance Hall basement is too dank and smelly for a child to survive.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; From here on the plot shifts into high gear. \u0026amp;nbsp;Chona is sick; Dodo is free; Moshe is still in charge; Malachi has in and out again. \u0026amp;nbsp;But Doctor Earl Roberts enters the story—and he is not a hero.. \u0026amp;nbsp;He went to school with Chona, was rejected by her because she had a bad “feeling” about him. \u0026amp;nbsp;He went to college, graduated with a medical degree, and returned to Pottstown to practice medicine. \u0026amp;nbsp;The Whites loved him; the Blacks raged against him; the Jews left him alone—all the Jews except for Chona. \u0026amp;nbsp;Chone knew he marched in the KKK parade each year, because she recognized his limp. Doc, too, was a cripple--and a very bad man.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Trying to find Dodo, Doc went to the store, confronted the sick Chona and got in a heated fight which caused Chona to stroke out. \u0026amp;nbsp;Instead of trying to save her life, Doc tries to rape Chona—until Dodo appears from behind a counter and attacks Doc—causing him to run out of the store. \u0026amp;nbsp;While helping Chona, Doc returns with the police, and they chase down the child. \u0026amp;nbsp;Trying to escape the police Dodo runs to the roof and is thrown off the roof by the police. Doc manages to convince the authorities and most of Chicken Hill that Chona was not assaulted. \u0026amp;nbsp;He was.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; In bad shape with broken bones from the fall, Dodo wakes up at the sanitarium locked in a crib next to a pale, white, deformed boy named Monkey Pants, and they both are heroes—because they’re stuck in the worst ward at a dirty hospital with a guard who is one of the biggest perverts imaginable, named Son of God.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReviews, Analysis, Dialectic Journal, images\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e67 pages;20,735 words; images\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50322430460120,"sku":"4.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Heaven_EarthGrocerystore.jpg?v=1743621400"},{"product_id":"great-writers-cormac-mccarthy-the-road-1","title":"Great Writers:  Cormac McCarthy, The Road","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2017, 307 pages, some visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMcCarthy's Pulitzer winning apocalyptic novel, The Road, follows a Father and Son's epiv journey to the Pacific Ocean from American's Destroyed midlands. The world has been destroyed and the wanderers are going through absolutely dangerous and unpredictable abandoned land.\u0026amp;nbsp; They are two survivors, but they meet every kind of villain and a few good men along the way.The ending is a bit controversial--some think the boy, after his father's death, is saved; but a lot of critics says that he has fallen into a cannibal family.\u0026amp;nbsp; McCarthy doesn't promote hope--he's stuck on surviving a cruel and chaotic world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson Plans, Dialectic Journal, 38 pages; 14,558 words, some visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50325960818904,"sku":"4.0","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/bookandfilm.jpg?v=1743710655"},{"product_id":"great-writers-roald-dahl-skin-anthology-for-teenage-adults-1","title":"Great Writers:  Roald Dahl:  Skin (anthology for teenage-adults)","description":"\u003cp\u003e{Published, New Yorker 1952, 224 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDahl was a great children's writer, and he also wrote stories for adults.\u0026amp;nbsp; When television programing was in its infancy, many popular writers tried their hand in producing and hosting Sunday Sci-Fi inststallments of their short stories.\u0026amp;nbsp; Alfred Hitchcock, Rod Sterling, and ROALD DAHL were producers, directors, and host of these series on the three popular channels: NBC, CBS and ABC.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Hitchcock used. Dahl stories for a number of his features.\u0026amp;nbsp; Dahl was hired to host a series by another network.\u0026amp;nbsp; Many of these stories were featured on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Lamb to the Slaughter,\"\u0026amp;nbsp; \"Skin,\"\u0026amp;nbsp; \"The Wish,\" \"An African Story,\"\u0026amp;nbsp; From Skin anthology\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The Man from the South,\" (not in Skin anthology\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e39 pages, 21,601 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50329260916952,"sku":"3.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Skin_Green.jpg?v=1743791954"},{"product_id":"great-writers-toni-morrison-the-bluest-eye","title":"Great Writers: Toni Morrison, \"The Bluest Eye\"","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1970; 244 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson plans: 29 pages; 12517 words\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eForward\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere can’t be anyone, I am sure, who doesn’t know what it feels like to be disliked, even rejected, momentarily or for sustained periods of time. Perhaps the feeling is merely indifference, mild annoyance, but it may also be hurt. It may even be that some of us know what it is like to be actually hated—hated for things we have no control over and cannot change. When this happens, it is some consolation to know that the dislike or hatred is unjustified—that you don’t deserve it. And if you have the emotional strength and\/or support from family and friends, the damage is reduced or erased. We think of it as the stress (minor or disabling) that is part of life as a human.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I began writing The Bluest Eye, I was interested in something else. Not resistance to the contempt of others, ways to deflect it, but the far more tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident. I knew that some victims of powerful self-loathing turn out to be dangerous, violent, reproducing the enemy who has humiliated them over and over. Others surrender their identity; melt into a structure that delivers the strong persona they lack. Most others, however, grow beyond it. But there are some who collapse, silently, anonymously, with no voice to express or acknowledge it. They are invisible. The death of self-esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has “legs,” so to speak. Couple the vulnerability of youth with indifferent parents, dismissive adults, and a world, which, in its language, laws, and images, re-enforces despair, and the journey to destruction is sealed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50329307283672,"sku":"3.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BluestEye.jpg?v=1743792572"},{"product_id":"great-writers-toni-morrison-the-song-of-solomon","title":"Great Writers: Toni Morrison, THE SONG OF SOLOMON","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1977, 352 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans; 91 pages, 42, 292 words\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter re-reading this again, I was surprised to app, and appreciate the \"architecture\" of how Morrison constructs a story--The suicide of a an insurance agent, the birth of an African-American in a hospital nearby, the baby, Macon Dead, grows up and not exactly feeling at home he begins a search of his family, fleeing slavery, and a shocking\u0026amp;nbsp; discovery of himself, and the purifying thrill of Macon's last act--Morrison weaves a story of corruption and epiphany in Song of Solomon.She takes a biblical reference and applies it to the Black diaspora. Truely a masterpiece by one of America's greatest writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50329339625688,"sku":"4.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Flying_eeaf0b53-60c5-4322-89bb-7537ace7e1e6.jpg?v=1743793028"},{"product_id":"greatest-writers-toni-morrison-sula","title":"Greatest Writers: Toni 'Morrison, SULA","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 1994; 192 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 52 pages, 24,049 words\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElsewhere (in an essay “Unspeakable Things Unspoken”), I have detailed my thoughts about developing the structure of Sula. “Originally, Sula opened with ‘Except for World War II, nothing interfered with National Suicide Day.’ With some encouragement I recognized that sentence as a false beginning.” Falseness, in this case, meant abrupt. There was no lobby, as it were, where the reader could be situated before being introduced to the goings-on of the characters. As I wrote in that essay, “The threshold between the reader and the black-topic text need not be the safe, welcoming lobby I persuaded myself [Sula] needed at that time. My preference was the demolition of the lobby altogether. [Of all of my books], only Sula has this ‘entrance.’ The others refuse the ‘presentation,’ refuse the seductive safe harbor; the line of demarcation between…them and us. Refuse, in effect, to cater to the diminished expectations of the reader, or his or her alarm heightened by the emotional luggage one carries into the black-topic text…. [Although] the bulk of the opening I finally wrote is about the community, a view of it…the view is not from within…but from the point of view of a stranger—the ‘valley man’ who might happen to be there and to and for whom all this is mightily strange, even exotic….[In] my new first sentence I am introducing an outside-the-circle reader into the circle. I am translating the anonymous into the specific, a ‘place’ into a ‘neighborhood’ and letting a stranger in, through whose eyes it can be viewed.” This deference, paid to the “white” gaze, was the one time I addressed the “problem.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHad I begun with Shadrack, as originally planned, I would have ignored the gentle welcome and put the reader into immediate confrontation with his wounded mind. It would have called greater attention to the traumatic displacement this most wasteful capitalist war had on black people, and thrown into relief their desperate and desperately creative strategies of survival. In the revised opening I tried to represent discriminatory, prosecutorial racial oppression as well as the community’s efforts to remain stable and healthy: the neighborhood has been almost completely swept away by commercial interests (a golf course), but the remains of what sustained it (music, dancing, craft, religion, irony, wit) are what the “valley man,” the stranger, sees—or could have seen. It is a more inviting embrace than Shadrack’s organized public madness—it helps to unify the neighborhood until Sula’s anarchy challenges it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOutlaw women are fascinating—not always for their behavior, but because historically women are seen as naturally disruptive and their status is an illegal one from birth if it is not under the rule of men. In much literature a woman’s escape from male rule led to regret, misery, if not complete disaster. In Sula I wanted to explore the consequences of what that escape might be, on not only a conventional black society, but on female friendship. In 1969, in Queens, snatching liberty seemed compelling. Some of us thrived; some of us died. All of us had a taste.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50329397035224,"sku":"4.0","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/SULA.jpg?v=1743794008"},{"product_id":"great-writers-tioni-morrison-tar-baby","title":"Great Writers: Tioni Morrison, TAR BABY","description":"\u003cp\u003eTAR BABY, Toni Morrison\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1981, 306 Pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal: 92 pages, 41,223\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Once upon a time, a long time ago...\u003cbr\u003eThere were four of us in the room: me, my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. The oldest one intemperate, brimming with hard, scary wisdom. The youngest, me, a sponge. My mother gifted, gregarious, burdened with insight. My grandmother a secret treasure whose presence anchored the frightening, enchanted world. Three women and a girl who never stopped listening, watching, seeking their advice, and eager for their praise. 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My approach to Charleston is always silent and distracted, but I come under full sail, with hissing silk and memories a wing above me in the shapes of the birds I love best: old brown pelicans, Great Blue herons, cowbirds, falcons lost at sea, ospreys lean from dives, and eagles over schools of mullet. I am a lowcountry boy. My entrance to this marsh-haunted city is always filled with troubled meditations on both my education and my solitude during a four-year residence at the Institute. 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They are not taught to read, to write to speak, or to be proud of themselves or their race. Their parents are not influential, literate, or vocal, so this educational system is perpetuated.vIf these parents were white and important, their school would be as fine a school in the country. If their parents were white, the question of a gas bill and maintenance bill would never come up—even if I were driving a battleship to work. But the school is black.The people on the island are black, And, my God, the hopelessness of teaching in a black society, cut off from society by water, is an agony few people have experienced. Yamacraw requites sweeping reform of your thinking. \u0026amp;nbsp;It demands for a brief moment that you forget about money and budgets and balanced books. Forget about your building plans, ordering new volleyballs for the high school and how many tractors to purchase next year. Think instead about children. People. Human beings. 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His works are deep, cerebral, rich and complex. His style is dense, sometimes fragmented, wordy and difficult to read. He has the longest sentences and the longest paragraphs of any other writer. If you are trying to follow the thread of a sentence, you might have to go back and break it down into its many parts to figure out exactly what is being said. If reading a novel by Faulkner is frustrating and tedious at times (a painful slog), you must also know that it is worth the effort or you wouldn’t be doing it.\u003cbr\u003eWhen I first started reading Faulkner’s 1936 novel, Absalom, Absalom, I found the first chapter (told in the voice of Miss Rosa Coldfield in 1909 when she is 64 years old) so difficult that I almost gave up. If you are able to make it through the first chapter, however, the following chapters are easier. Not easy, but not quite as difficult. (There’s no linear structure to the novel.)\u003cbr\u003eAbsalom, Absalom is the multilayered family saga of the Sutpen and Coldfield families in the American South in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Thomas Sutpen confounds the town of Jefferson, Mississippi—and particularly the Coldfield family—when he comes from nowhere and acquires a huge tract of land, called the Sutpen Hundred (square miles, not acres), and builds an enormous house on the edge of a swamp with the help of his band of wild black men and a French architect, who he more or less treats as a captive.\u003cbr\u003eFor years after the house is built, Thomas Sutpen entertains a band of his male friends with wild hunting and drinking parties and wrestling matches, until the day arrives when he decides he wants to acquire respectability in the form of a wife and children.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFaulkner was perhaps the first writer to \"blame\" the South for its own problems--mainly slavery, the Civil War, and The Big Lie.\u0026amp;nbsp; He was also one of the first struggling writers of the South to go to Paris, live at Roan Oak in Mississippi, study in New Orleans, and relocate to Los Angles to write screenplays for MGM. 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Recommend only for advanced reading students, Whatever their proficiencies, this will challenge them.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50329927647448,"sku":"5.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/absalom_absalom.jpg?v=1743801548"},{"product_id":"great-writers-william-faulkner-the-bear-a-rose-for-emily","title":"Great Writers: William Faulkner \"The Bear,\"  \"A Rose for Emily\"","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe belief in Isaac McCaslin’s heart that the land itself has been cursed by slavery, and that the only way for him to escape is to relinquish the land.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished 2013; 204 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The Bear\": The Saturday Evening Post, 1942\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A Rose for EmilY\" 1940, The forum\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans:31 pages, 16,359 words\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50332273934552,"sku":"3.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/ARoseforEmily.webp?v=1743858987"},{"product_id":"great-writers-percival-everett-james","title":"Great Writers:Percival Everett, JAMES","description":"\u003cp\u003eJames:\u0026amp;nbsp; Perival Everitt\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished; 2024, 303 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal: Lesson Plans; 74 pages, 22,706 words, dialect, objections, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCaution: Review this 60 Minutes episode on the Censorship of Huck Finn\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ehttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nW9-qee1m9o\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50333000040664,"sku":"","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/american_fiction_and_percival_everett_1050x700_e36678d9-1b78-4c90-b7e7-18d93bb42c93.jpg?v=1743880861"},{"product_id":"great-writers-percival-everitt-erasure","title":"Great Writers: Percival Everitt, ERASURE","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhile in college I was a member of the Black Panther Party, defunct as it was, mainly because I felt I had to prove I was black enough. Some people in the society in which I live, described as being black, tell me I am not black enough. Some people whom the society calls white tell me the same thing. I have heard this mainly about my novels, from editors who have rejected me and reviewers whom I have apparently confused and, on a couple of occasions, on a basketball court when upon missing a shot I muttered Egads. From a reviewer:\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe novel is finely crafted, with fully developed characters, rich language and subtle play with the plot, but one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus’ The Persians has to do with the African American experience.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne night at a party in New York, one of the tedious affairs where people who write mingle with people who want to write and with people who can help either group begin or continue to write, a tall, thin, rather ugly book agent told me that I could sell many books if I’d forget about writing retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists and settle down to write the true, gritty real stories of black life. I told him that I was living a black life, far blacker than he could ever know, that I had lived one, that I would be living one. He left me to chat with an on-the-rise performance artist\/novelist who had recently posed for seventeen straight hours in front of the governor’s mansion as a lawn jockey. He familiarly flipped one of her braided extensions and tossed a thumb back in my direction. The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is. 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But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety - six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full - sized adult. Making ninety - six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress. 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The dungeon stored them until the ships arrived. Dahomeyan raiders kidnapped the men first, then returned to her village the next moon for the women and children, marching them in chains to the sea two by two. As she stared into the black doorway, Ajarry thought she’d be reunited with her father, down there in the dark. The survivors from her village told her that when her father couldn’t keep the pace of the long march, the slavers stove in his head and left his body by the trail. Her mother had died years before.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCora’s grandmother was sold a few times on the trek to the fort, passed between slavers for cowrie shells and glass beads. It was hard to say how much they paid for her in Ouidah as she was part of a bulk purchase, eighty-eight human souls for sixty crates of rum and gunpowder, the price arrived upon after the standard haggling in Coast English. 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The field had been a grazing pasture when the school operated a dairy, selling milk to local customers—one of the state of Florida’s schemes to relieve the taxpayer burden of the boys’ upkeep. The developers of the office park had earmarked the field for a lunch plaza, with four water features and a concrete bandstand for the occasional event. The discovery of the bodies was an expensive complication for the real estate company awaiting the all clear from the environmental study, and for the state’s attorney, which had recently closed an investigation into the abuse stories. Now they had to start a new inquiry, establish the identities of the deceased and the manner of death, and there was no telling when the whole damned place could be razed, cleared, and neatly erased from history, which everyone agreed was long overdue.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll the boys knew about that rotten spot. It took a student from the University of South Florida to bring it to the rest of the world, decades after the first boy was tied up in a potato sack and dumped there. When asked how she spotted the graves, Jody said, “The dirt looked wrong.” The sunken earth, the scrabbly weeds. Jody and the rest of the archaeology students from the university had been excavating the school’s official cemetery for months. The state couldn’t dispose of the property until the remains were properly resettled, and the archaeology students needed field credits. With stakes and wire they divided the area into search grids, dug with hand shovels and heavy equipment. After sifting the soil, bones and belt buckles and soda bottles lay scattered on their trays in an inscrutable exhibit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Nickel Boys called the official cemetery Boot Hill, from the Saturday matinees they had enjoyed before they went to the school and exiled from such pastimes. The name stuck, generations later, with the South Florida students who’d never seen a Western in their lives. Boot Hill was just over the big slope on the north campus. The white concrete X’s that marked the graves caught the sunlight on bright afternoons. Names were carved into two-thirds of the crosses; the rest were blank. Identification was difficult, but competition between the young archaeologists made for constant progress. The school records, though incomplete and haphazard, narrowed down who WILLIE 1954 had been. The burned remains accounted for those who perished in the dormitory fire of 1921. DNA matches with surviving family members—the ones the university students were able to track down—reconnected the dead to the living world that proceeded without them. 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ANNA","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2003; Number of pages: 320\u003cbr\u003eDialectic Journal: 82 pages, 35,283 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMovie: Spike Lee, 208 pages, 2008 premier\u003cbr\u003eRunning Time: 2 hours, 40 minutes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHollywood War, Revised Edition\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp;“Miracle at St. Anna,” directed by Spike Lee and based on a novel by James McBride, who wrote the screenplay, exists in part to make the obvious, overdue point that men like Hector (Laz Alonso) Latino and in particular African-American soldiers fought as bravely and as hard as the characters in those Hollywood combat epics. 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(AP) June 14, 1966—\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA fire that destroyed the city’s oldest Negro church has led to the discovery of a wild slave narrative that highlights a little-known era of American history. The First United Negro Baptist Church of the Abyssinia at 4th and Bainbridge Streets was destroyed by fire last night. Fire officials blamed a faulty gas heater. No one was injured in the blaze. But among the scorched remains were several charred notebooks belonging to a late church deacon that have attracted national academic interest.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003eCharles D. Higgins, a congregation member since 1921, died last May. Higgins was a cook, but also an amateur historian who apparently recorded the account of another elderly United Baptist congregation member, Henry “the Onion” Shackleford, who claimed to have been the only Negro to survive the American outlaw John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859. Brown, a white abolitionist, attempted to capture the nation’s largest arsenal to start a war on slavery. The failed raid caused a national panic and prompted the start of America’s Civil War. It led to Brown’s hanging, as well as the deaths of most of his 19 accomplices, including four Negroes. Until now, no full account of Brown or of his men has ever been found or known to exist. (2)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50343293092056,"sku":"","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BookCover_5c7249ad-d3c0-47e7-a2a6-7b7b8cc0e7c7.jpg?v=1744390879"},{"product_id":"great-writers-james-mcbride-deacon-king-kong","title":"Great Writers, James McBride, DEACON KING KONG","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2020, 371 paes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 106 pages, 47,975 words\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSportcoat, however, arrived at the church in great shape, having spent the previous night celebrating Hettie’s life with his buddy Rufus Harley, who was from his hometown and was his second-best friend in Brooklyn after Hot Sausage. Rufus was janitor at the nearby Watch Houses just a few blocks off, and while he and Hot Sausage didn’t get along—Rufus was from South Carolina, while Sausage hailed from Alabama—Rufus made a special blend of white lightning known as King Kong that everyone, even Hot Sausage, enjoyed.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSportcoat didn’t like the name of Rufus’s specialty and over the years had proposed several names for it. “You could sell this stuff like hoecakes if it weren’t named after a gorilla,” he said once. “Why not call it Nellie’s Nightcap, or Gideon’s Sauce?” But Rufus always scoffed at the notions. “I used to call it Sonny Liston,” he said, referring to the feared Negro heavyweight champ whose hammer-like fists knocked opponents out cold, “till Muhammad Ali come along.” Sportcoat had to agree that by whatever name, Rufus’s white lightning was the best in Brooklyn.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50343295385816,"sku":"5.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BookCover_be5da3a2-fee7-4de4-8ba4-d98d248edb28.jpg?v=1744390403"},{"product_id":"great-writer-james-mcbride-the-heaven-and-earth-grocery-store","title":"Great Writer, James McBride, THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublish: 2023, 400 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 68 pages, 20,744 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy showcasing neighbors misunderstanding neighbors, McBride shines a light on how communities in America are at times walled apart by difference, even in intimate relationships. Through this story, he asks: How do racial and class divides manifest in how we know and see one another and in how we allow ourselves to be known and seen?\u003cbr\u003e“The Heaven \u0026amp;amp; Earth Grocery Store” is a charming, smart, heart-blistering and heart-healing novel. Great love bursts through these pages via the friends and families that mobilize to protect Dodo, a child endangered by the structures he was born into and injured by. With this story, McBride brilliantly captures a rapidly changing country, as seen through the eyes of the recently arrived and the formerly enslaved people of Chicken Hill. He has reached back into our shared past when, by migration and violence, segregation and collision, America was still becoming America. 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A graduate of Oberlin College, McBride has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. He holds several honorary doctorates and is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRuth McBride Jordan\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRuth McBride Jordan was born Rachel Deborah Shilsky (Ruchel Dwajra Zylska) in Poland, in 1921. Her family immigrated to America when she was two, and eventually settled in Suffolk, Virginia. After high school she moved to New York City and married Andrew D. McBride, with whom she founded the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. After her husband’s death in 1957, she remarried, to Hunter Jordan, who died in 1972. She is a 1986 graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received her degree in Social Work Administration at age 65. Today Ruth travels to Paris, London, New York, and Atlanta regularly; works as a volunteer with the Philadelphia Emergency Center, a shelter for homeless teenage mothers; runs a reading club in the Ewing, New Jersey, public library; and works at the Jerusalem Baptist church in Trenton, New Jersey, in their program to feed the homeless. She lives in Ewing township with her daughter Kathy Jordan and Kathy’s two children, Gyasi and Maya. 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I had been a voracious reader since the third grade, yet for the first time, here was a story that finally spoke to the heart of me. I was in awe. How could this author, Maya Angelou, have the same life experiences, the same feelings, longings, perceptions, as a poor black girl from Mississippi—as me? \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e I marveled from the first pages: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e “What you looking at me for? \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e I didn’t come to stay … \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e I just come to tell you, it’s Easter Day.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eI was that girl who had recited Easter pieces—and pieces of Christmas poems, too. I was that girl who loved to read. 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