Introduction What if the hardest question in Martyr! is not whether death can have meaning, but why human beings feel such a powerful need to make suffering mean something?Cyrus Shams has spent much of his life searching for an answer.His mother was supposedly killed when Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down. His father lived a difficult immigrant life raising … [Read more...] about Martyr Kaveh Akbar Analysis: Meaning, Death & Suffering
contemporary literature
Convenience Store Woman: Who Decides What Is Normal?
Introduction Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman begins with a woman whose life looks, from the outside, strangely incomplete.Keiko Furukura is thirty-six years old.She has worked at the same convenience store for eighteen years.She is unmarried.She has no children.She has no conventional career trajectory.Most people around her assume that something … [Read more...] about Convenience Store Woman: Who Decides What Is Normal?
The Last Affordable Road: A Modern Grapes of Wrath Story
What if The Grapes of Wrath unfolded in America today instead of the 1930s? Introduction by Nick SasakiWe listened to the people who lived The Grapes of Wrath. We listened to the scholars who explained it. But one question remained: What would John Steinbeck write if he were alive today?Welcome to the final chapter of our The Grapes of Wrath Trilogy.The … [Read more...] about The Last Affordable Road: A Modern Grapes of Wrath Story