Discussion of The Bluest eyes

1.

Maureen Peal is a new girl in Claudia’s school. She is popular because she is wealthy and light-skinned. Claudia and her sister discover that everyone loves Maureen and wishes to become her friend. They do not like her,but they all agree to walk home together. How do they really feel about her?

2.

Why does the story begin with Junior’s mother Geraldine, not get to the part which JUNIOR tortures the cat and children who come to play at the nearby school playground. How does it relate with his mother? What kind of person is his mother?

 

Daniyal Mueenuddin Introduction +Questions

Daniyal Mueenuddin:
Born: Pakistan, 1963 (brought up in Lahore, Pakistan and Elroy, Wisconsin)
Awards: the winner of the 2010 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2010),in Other Rooms, Other Wonders was the winner of The Story Prize (2009),The collection was also a finalist for the 2009 National Book Awards, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the 2010 Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award, and the 2010 Ondaatje Prize (2010),TIME magazine's top ten books (2009), Publishers Weekly's top ten books (2009), The Economist's top ten fiction books (2009), the Guardian's best books of the year (2009), The New Statesman's best books of the year (2009), and The New York Times' hundred best books of the year (2009).
One of his short stories, "Nawabdin Electrician", was selected by Salman Rushdie for the Best American Short Stories of 2008.(2008) Another story, "A Spoiled Man", was selected for the 2010 edition of The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.
Works:  Provide, Provide; In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Style: bridges the efficient with the lyrical, beautiful diction. The common theme is struggling and progressing.
Quotation: "I realized that I was in a unique position to write these stories for a Western audience – stories about the farm and the old feudal ways, the dissolving feudal order and the new way coming, the sleek businessmen from the cities. I resigned from the law firm, returned to Pakistan, and began writing the stories that make up this book."(http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1659/Daniyal-Mueenuddin)

Literary influence: beautiful stories of men and women who are creatures of the rules of where they live– a modern yet feudal Pakistan, where to survive, one has to negotiate with whatever they have- their lands, their bodies, their sugarcane crop.  (http://beyondthemargins.com/2010/02/interview-with-daniyal-mueenuddin/) Influence Pakistani and American.

Two Questions I would ask:
1.When you are writing a story, what is the biggest difficulty for most time?
2. What do you think is the most important thing for high school students to write a good essay?

Nawabdin Electrician Analysis

 The story Nawabdin Electrician includes the conflicts between the lower class and higher class, the poor and the rich, daily aspects of social revolution, and the fear of  death and social hierarchy. The protagonist Nawabdin is a contented handyman who reflects the most common life of people in lower class. The motorcycle symbolizes Nawabdin's social level. "The motorcycle increased his status, gave him weight, so that people began calling him'uncle', and asking his opinion on world affairs, about which he knew absolutely nothing." (Nawabdin Electrician,17 ) As a father who has twelve daughters, life is somehow suffering for his family, and the motorcycle reveals his desire to his life. Despite of poverty, Nawabdin still has a kind heart and eagerness to help his customers." He flourished on a signature capability, a technique for cheating the electric company by slowing down the revolutions of the electric meters, so cunningly done that his customers could specify to the hundred-rupee note the desired monthly savings. "(Nawabdin Electrician,13)


Nawabdin is a smart workman, but somehow he judges his motorcycle even more important than his life. He does not give up his property easily. When he faces a robber, even though he gets shot, he still tries to stand up and protects his own motorcycle. (24) The reasons of his action are complicated. One of the reason is that if he loses his motorcycle, he cannot afford his 13-people family anymore. Another reason which Nawabdin does not point out is that losing the motorcycle means losing his social status made up by motorcycle. Nawabdin enjoys the feeling of being called "uncle", and because of his vanity, he almost loses his life. In contrast to Nawabdin, the robber is bad but pitiful. It is poverty that forces him to plunder, and he has no choice. Poorness also contradicts the ethics in life. In short, the story reflects the conflicts of humanidad and enlightens the readers to think more about life.