Reading Options

I am pleasantly surprised at the vast amount of reading options available to us this semester! Especially exciting to me is the fact that the options come from all over the world, including cultures I've never even heard of, such as the Khasi people from India and Bangladesh. I've heard many Greek myths and Western fairy tales before, and while I'll be happy to revisit those stories and compare them to others, I'm pleased about the exposure to other cultures and styles of storytelling that I'll be getting.

Even though I just mentioned how excited I am to learn about other places through their stories, I'm going to start at home. One of the units I am very interested in is the Southwest/California Native American tales. I'm from New Mexico and proud of it, but I know shamefully little about the Native American tribes from our area. I've heard the Coyote trickster tales, but not much else. Creation stories are attractive to me, so I hope to read a variety of those. There are many in this unit! The Nigerian unit has many stories that explain why certain natural phenomena happen, especially concerning animals, and I find that interesting and closely connected to creation stories. I think I like to hear the different ways people explain how the world around them works and why it works that way, whether the explanation is literal or figurative.

I came across the Japanese mythology unit through the story randomizer on the UnTextbook site. The randomizer displayed the Japanese story "The Fortunate Fish-Hook" and I was drawn in by the artwork. I am a fan of a certain style of Japanese art that I think is best represented by Kawase Hasui, and the artwork for "The Fortunate Fish-Hook" reminded me of this style; I couldn't help clicking! I like that the book used for the Japanese mythology includes artwork, so I'll be returning to this unit.

Illustration from "The Fortunate Fish-Hook." 

From Romance of Old Japan.

Example of Kawase Hasui's work, from Wikimedia Commons.

I read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie in high school, which filled me with a vague desire to educate myself on some Indian epics. While I'm not in the Indian Epics class, I was happy to see that there is a unit over Ramayana for us Mythology and Folklore people! I'd like to read this "brief retelling" in order to gain a basic knowledge of the events and themes of the epic (for cultural reference reasons) and so that I can maybe read longer versions in the future. I also see that there are other Indian units with great collections of stories that I'd be interested in reading as well.

There are many more units that sound interesting to me that I haven't yet explored; the last one I'll mention today is the Women Saints unit. I'm not Catholic, but I'm really intrigued by the mysticism of Catholicism and the many stories about saints. I'm also interested in the way women were treated and written about in the Middle Ages. I read the story of Saint Juliana, and her treatment was pretty disturbing; what was most disturbing to me was that her imprisonment for refusing to marry a powerful man seemed quite commonplace (although that could just be the language of the story). I liked Juliana's strong and steadfast character, and I found the conversation with the demon and other spiritual aspects of the story pretty interesting. Christianity from the Middle Ages is generally terrifying and never boring!

I plan to keep exploring the units, but I think I have enough to keep me occupied for the time being!