Name: ______

Independent Study Unit – ENG2DG/E

Step 1: Getting an Overview

Step 1 – Introduction to ISU Week of Sept. 23rd (Wed. in library)

Step 2 – “Choosing a Novel” Sheets Due: Fri. Sept. 28th

Step 3 –Critical Reviews

Finding Critical Reviews Lesson and Practice Wed. Oct. 3rd

Bring Novel to Class: Due: Tues. Oct. 9th (day after Thanksgiving)

Critical Reviews Group Report Due: Wed. Feb. 10th

Step 4 – Participating in a Book Club

Plan by Book Club Leader: Due: ______(One day before you lead book club)

Book Club #1 - Role: ______Wed. Oct. 17th

Book Club #2 - Role: ______Wed. Oct. 24th

Book Club #3 - Role: ______Wed. Oct. 31st

Book Club #4 - Role: ______Wed. Nov. 7th

Step 5 – Writing a Literary Essay

Quotation Analysis & Thesis Proposal Due: Wed. Nov. 14th

In-class Essay Outline Wed. Nov. 28th

In-class Essay Rough Copy Thurs. Nov. 29th

In-class Final Copy of Literary Essay Fri. Nov. 30th

Step 6 – Writing a Speech and Oral Presentations

ISU Speech - Rhetorical Devices and Methods of Development

Due: Wed. Dec. 5th

Audio-Visual Plan and Cue Cards Due: Wed. Dec. 12th

ISU Presentations: (Mon. Dec. 17th – Wed. June 19th)

My Presentation Due Date: ______

Step 7 – In-Class Reflection ______


Novel Choices

John Irving–A Prayer for Owen Meaney

The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire, USA who has become a voluntary exile from the United States (having settled in Toronto, Canada and taken on Canadian citizenship). The story is narrated in two interwoven timeframes. The first timeframe is the perspective of John in the present day (1987). The second (much larger) timeframe is John's memories of the past, growing up in New Hampshire in the 1950s and 1960s alongside his best friend, Owen Meany (Wikipedia).

Frank McCourt – Angela’s Ashes

Protagonist and first-person narrator Frank McCourt begins his memoir of his early life in Limerick, Ireland, with a description of how his parents Angela Sheehan and Malachy McCourt met in New York City and were forced to marry by Angela's cousins Delia and Philomena after Angela became pregnant with Frank. Things turn bad almost immediately. Malachy can't find work in Depression era New York City and any money he does earn goes into the pubs of New York. Angela struggles to feed her family and relies heavily on her Brooklyn neighbours for help. Malachy is steadier after the birth of Margaret but the baby dies shortly and Angela falls into a deep depression. The cousins save the day once more and arrange for the McCourts to return to Ireland and it's here that things go from bad to worse (Wikipedia).

Jhumpa Lahiri - The Namesake

The Ganguli family in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake has a problem. The mother and father are traditional Bengalese from Calcutta, and they are not particularly interested in assimilating into the United States, their adopted home. Gogol, their son, however, was born in the United States and is somewhat embarrassed by his parents Bengalese practices. Gogol is also uncomfortable with his name. It is neither a Bengalese nor an American name.No one he knows has a name like his. In school, kids make fun of it. But the conflict goes deeper than that (Wikipedia)

J. D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye

The majority of the novel takes place in December 1945. The story commences with Holden Caulfield, the seventeen-year-old narrator and protagonist of the novel, addressing the reader directly from a mental hospital in southern California. He wants to tell us about events that took place over a two-day period the previous December. It is a frame story, or long flashback, constructed through Holden's memory as he describes encounters he has had with students and faculty of Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. He criticizes them for being superficial, as he would say, "phony" (Wikipedia).

Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha

The novel follows the perspective of Chiyo (Zhang Ziyi), a girl who, at the age of nine, is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto in the early 1930s. Here, she learns that becoming a geisha can be the single path to wealth and independence for a woman. The head geisha of her house, however, Hatsumomo, is bitterly jealous of Chiyo and abuses her at every opportunity. Eventually Chiyo is taken under the wing of Hatsumomo's rival, Mameha, by far the most famous and successful geisha in their district. Under Mameha's tutelage, Chiyo becomes Sayuri, the most legendary geisha in the nation, skilled in all areas, from conversation to dance, and sought after by seemingly every man alive...except for the one whom she has secretly longed for since she began her training, The Chairman -- a man who showed her kindness at a time when her view of the world had turned the most bleak. Now as World War II approaches, Japan stands at the brink of a new era and Sayuri must confront the possibility that history will leave all that she has worked for behind (fandango.com).

Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

This novel is an American classic about a young Brooklyn girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. This novel was listed as one of the books of the century. It gives insight into what the immigrant experience was like for many people who came to a new country to find a better life (TheBestNotes.com)

Khaled Hosseini - A Thousand Splendid Suns

The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age fifteen into marrying Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal when she fails to produce a child. Eighteen years later, Rasheed takes another wife, fourteen year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Mariam and Laila become allies in a battle with Rasheed, whose violent abuse is endorsed by custom and law. The author gives a forceful portrait of despotism where women are dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their only path to an accepted social status. Each woman in the end is forced to accept a path that will never be completely happy for them: Mariam will have to sacrifice her life to save Laila after she murders their husband while Laila, even though marrying her childhood love, must find a way to keep the sacrifice Mariam has made from not becoming an act done in vain (TheBestNotes.com)

Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner

Amir tells us about the unique relationship he has with Hassan, a Hazara boy who is the victim of discrimination, but ironically is the half-brother of Amir, a Pashtun. Amir is overwhelmed with guilt when he allows Hassan to be beaten and raped on the day Amir wins the kite flying tournament. He lies to have Hassan accused of theft so he will leave their home and Amir can try to forget his guilt. Eventually, Amir and his father flee Afghanistan after the Russians invade and Amir takes his tragic memories to America to start a new life (Wikipedia).

Unfortunately, his debt to Hassan must be paid and he returns to his country to find Hassan’s orphaned son and rescue him. There, he discovers that Sohrab has become the sexual plaything of Assef, the bully who had tormented both Amir and Hassan when they were young. Ultimately, Amir must defeat Assef in a raging physical battle, take the damaged Sohrab out of Afghanistan and try to help him repair his spirit (TheBestNotes.com).

Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible

A bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia (U.S. state) to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River. (The nearest town, an impossibly long journey away, is Bulungu.) The Prices' story, which parallels their host country's tumultuous emergence into the post-colonial era, is narrated by the five women of the family: Orleanna, the long-suffering wife of Baptist missionary Nathan Price, and their four daughters—Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May (Wikipedia).

Jeanette Walls - The Glass Castle

A successful journalist, Jeannette Walls, relates the horrific childhood she experienced being raised by alcoholic, manipulative, and selfish parents. Her parents are extremely dysfunctional and yet very vibrant people who force their children to learn how to take care of themselves by feeding, clothing, and protecting each other (Wikipedia)

Patrick Ness - The Knife of Never Letting Go

It would not be incorrect to say that this is the story of a boy and his dog. If that boy lived in a settlement on another planet and the dog could talk that is. Todd Hewitt lives with his foster parents in a place where everyone can hear each other’s thoughts all the time. Well, all the men can anyway. All the women are dead. He is one month shy of his thirteenth birthday when he will become a man, when he discovers something in the swamp that puts him in danger–a place of complete quiet. Now his whole world is turned upside down and he must go on the run with his dog and hope that he can survive (Wikipedia).