SRINQ summer assignment
All books should be available at the public library, Powell’s, Amazon, or other local and national book
stores.
Over the summer you have a two-part assignment. You will read two books, one assigned, the other
you will choose from a list. For the shared book, you will gather evidence as you read for our first
paper, for the second you will do a short write up on the ending (see details below on both these
tasks). Reading two novels over the course of several months is a tiny taste of the levels of work and
reading you will be asked to do in college. If you are not already an avid reader, the job of this class is
to help you become one.
1.The Handmaid’s Tale- Margaret Atwood
All students will read The Handmaid’s Tale. You will choose a lens to read through, paying close
attention to that lens throughout the text. After you have finished reading, look at the patterns
that you have noticed throughout your reading and come up with a thesis/theme statement
based on your exploration through this lens. You should come in one the first day of class with
a thesis statement and at least five pieces of evidence from the text to support your thesis.
Your first task of the year will be to write a paper based on this information. For example, if I use the
lens of looking at the setting, I would read the novel paying close attention to the setting and then,
make a claim about how the setting contributes to an overall theme or thesis based on the patterns I
notice as I read. I will then mark my evidence that I noticed along the way to prove my thesis/theme
statement.
You will need to have a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale for the first couple weeks of the school
year. If you take it out from the library, please plan accordingly.
Lens to consider (you will choose one):
Relationships between characters (What do the relationships between main characters reveal
about the world of The Handmaid’s Tale?)
Gender (How are the gender roles set up in Gilead? What are the drawbacks for each gender? How
are the roles set up and enforced? What parallels can be drawn to our modern day gender
dynamics?)
Class (How do the former class (economic) statuses of the characters affect their lives in Gilead?
What does it mean to have more money/status? What privileges does it afford the higher-class
characters? What parallels can be drawn to our modern day class dynamics?)
Failure to complete this assignment will result in removal from Senior Inquiry as you will not
be able to complete our first paper.
2. A second book of your choice.
All students will choose a book from the list below to read. At the beginning of the year you should
be ready to do a quick share out on your book, letting your peers know what it was about and
why you do, or do not, recommend the book for them to read in the future. You will also hand
in a short (1 page) response to the book that explains whether or not you found the ending
satisfying.
I have included the number of pages (based on the most popular version- actual numbers of pages
may vary by edition) to help you choose. The books are divided into non-fiction and fiction. You
should choose one book (either fiction or non-fiction, NOT both).
You will not need to have a physical copy of the book with you when you come to class in the
fall.
All book descriptions were found at barnesandnoble.com and/or Wikipedia.org
Choice book list (Scroll down for Fiction selection):
Non-Fiction
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down-Anne Fadiman
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in
California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with
severe epilepsy. Lia’s parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of
understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for
Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award, Anne
Fadiman’s compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest. 368
pages
Random Family- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the
ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug
dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances—Jessica’s dizzying infatuation with a
hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco’s first love with Jessica's little brother,
Cesar—Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy
George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the
street, all four caught in a precarious dance between survival and death. Friends get murdered; the
DEA and FBI investigate Boy George; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure
homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and, throughout it all, the insidious
damage of poverty.
Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations—as girls become mothers, boys become criminals,
and hope struggles against deprivation—LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism
and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story. 432 pages
Devil’s Highway- Luis Alberto Urrea
"The single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S.
border policy" (The Atlantic).
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern
Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis
Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer
Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern
American classic. 272 pages
Mountains Beyond Mountains-Tracy Kidder
At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard Professor,
renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant,
world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found
his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern
medicine to those who need them most. This book shows how radical change can be fostered in
situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as
Farmer - brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds
time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti - blasts through convention to get
results.352 pages
Woman Warrior- Maxine Hong Kingston
A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California
childhood that have shaped her identity. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among
Ghosts is a memoir, or collection of memoirs, by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Vintage
Books in 1975. Although there are many scholarly debates surrounding the official genre
classification of the book, it can best be described as a work of creative non-fiction.
Throughout the five chapters of The Woman Warrior, Kingston blends autobiography with old
Chinese folktales. What results is a complex portrayal of the 20th century experiences of ChineseAmericans living in the U.S in the shadow of the Chinese Revolution.
The Woman Warrior has been reported by the Modern Language Association as the most commonly
taught text in modern university education. 224 pages
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks-Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer
whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in
medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta's
cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family
can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the
collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a
daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. 381 pages
Whatever it Takes- Paul Tough
What would it take?
That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the
lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in
big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the
Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new
and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to
be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives—their
schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.
Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but
of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great
odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and
potentially transformative social experiment of our time. 336 pages
Lakota Woman- Mary Crow Dog
Mary Brave Bird grew up fatherless in a one-room cabin, without running water or electricity, on the
Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing
missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she
joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and
seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief
medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance.
Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American
Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of
determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the
Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's
leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path
of her fascinating life. 272 pages
Fiction
So Far From God-Ana Castillo
"A delightful novel...impossible to resist."—Barbara Kingsolver, Los Angeles Times Book Review
The novel, set in the tiny village of Tome, New Mexico, employs magic realism to examine the lives of
Mexican-American women on the borders. The character Sofi, a middle-aged single mother, and her
four daughters live at a crossroads between Chicano, Mexican, Spanish, and First Nations cultures.
While juggling her small business duties and childcare, Sofi confronts both the modern technological
moment and ageless traditions of birth, growth, and loss; for comfort, she and her neighbors are
immersed in competing religious traditions of Catholicism, curanderismo, and folk-traditions
concerning the nature of the spirit. 256 pages
Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston
One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's
beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling
with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live
in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely
independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by
poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and
affecting today as when it was first published—perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded
novel in the entire canon of African American literature. 256 pages
A Fine Balance- Rohinton Mistry
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this
magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is
1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of
Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from
his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be
thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance
creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state. 624 pages
Americanah- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning
author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West.
Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced
to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to
join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous,
undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and
reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland. 602 pages
Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2013
Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce,
evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with
them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden
seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of
one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in
postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the
twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected
prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world
economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. 576 pages
The Known World- Edward P. Jones
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and
an unusual mentor -- William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's
Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation -- as
well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things
begin to fall apart at their plantation: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families
who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the
Townsend estate, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave
"speculators" sell free black people into slavery, and rumors of slave rebellions set white families
against slaves who have served them for years.
An ambitious, luminously written novel that ranges seamlessly between the past and future and back
again to the present, The Known World weaves together the lives of freed and enslaved blacks,
whites, and Indians -- and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional
world created by the institution of slavery. 432 pages
Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Winner of the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Finalist for the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction.
The Round House- Louise Erdrich
National Book Award Winner
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The
details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or
reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In
one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her
bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into
an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his
efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends,
Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round
House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.
Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a
community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and
entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a
spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice
that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today. 368 pages
Winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction
100 Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and
acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–
winning career.
The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of
the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of
humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of
humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.
Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the
endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel.
Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of
government, Gabriel García Márquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the
mark of a master.
Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and
spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this
stunning work is no less than an accounting of the history of the human race. 448 pages