Introduction Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman begins with a deceptively simple question: what if a person is content with a life that society considers incomplete?Keiko Furukura does not seem to need marriage, status, ambition, or conventional adulthood in the way people expect. Her life forces readers to ask whether “normal” is really a truth, or … [Read more...] about Convenience Store Woman: 5 American Stories About Marriage and Freedom
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Convenience Store Woman: Is the New Normal Really Normal?
Introduction Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman begins with a woman who does not fit the conventional picture of adulthood.Keiko Furukura is unmarried.She has no children.She has spent eighteen years working in the same convenience store.Her family worries.People around her assume she should want something different.Part One asked whether Keiko should … [Read more...] about Convenience Store Woman: Is the New Normal Really Normal?
Social Health Stories: 5 Ways We Lost Our Sense of Belonging
Introduction We usually think loneliness means having nobody.But what if that is not always true?A person can have loving family, longtime friends, coworkers, messages arriving throughout the day, and hundreds of online connections, yet still lack something harder to name: social health.Inspired by the ideas explored through Kasley Killam, Robert Putnam, … [Read more...] about Social Health Stories: 5 Ways We Lost Our Sense of Belonging
Social Health: Why Modern Life Is Making Us Lonely
Introduction Modern life has given us extraordinary freedom, convenience, mobility, and access to people across distance. Yet many people still feel strangely alone.Kasley Killam, Robert Putnam, Sherry Turkle, and Priya Parker approach this problem from different directions. Killam looks at social health. Putnam studies the decline of civic life and social … [Read more...] about Social Health: Why Modern Life Is Making Us Lonely
The Nickel Boys: 5 Modern Stories About Truth, Trauma and Hope
Introduction What happens after we learn that courage alone is not enough?Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys gave us Elwood and Turner, two boys who respond to injustice in radically different ways. Elwood believes truth must be spoken. Turner believes survival requires knowing when truth can get you hurt.The scholar conversation pushed those questions … [Read more...] about The Nickel Boys: 5 Modern Stories About Truth, Trauma and Hope
5 Modern Stories Inspired by Circe by Madeline Miller
Introduction What happens when the defenses that once protected us begin shaping the lives we are trying to save?These five modern stories were inspired by themes explored in Madeline Miller’s Circe, but they are not retellings of the novel. Each story moves into a different contemporary life and magnifies one emotional problem beneath the mythology.A … [Read more...] about 5 Modern Stories Inspired by Circe by Madeline Miller
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
The Grapes of Wrath Explained Through Its Characters
Introduction by John Steinbeck When people finish The Grapes of Wrath, they often remember the dust.Or the truck.Or the long road west.I remember the people.(He pauses.)Because long after the dust settled...they were still speaking.We simply had to learn how to listen.People often ask whether The Grapes of Wrath is a political novel.I have never found that … [Read more...] about The Grapes of Wrath Explained Through Its Characters
The White Silence: A Japanese Novel of Loneliness
What if the smallest act of kindness could save someone whose suffering no one else had noticed?The White Silence began with a question inspired by José Saramago’s Nobel Prize-winning novel Blindness:What would happen if the same mysterious epidemic of white blindness appeared in modern Japan?Saramago’s novel places ordinary people inside a sudden collapse of … [Read more...] about The White Silence: A Japanese Novel of Loneliness
If God Created Man and Woman, Is God Our Original Parent?
What if the existence of fathers and mothers reveals something profound about the nature of God? For thousands of years, humanity has searched for God by looking upward.We have studied the stars, explored the laws of nature, written sacred books, built magnificent temples, and debated profound theological questions. Yet one possibility often escapes our … [Read more...] about If God Created Man and Woman, Is God Our Original Parent?