Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain

Author: Michele Morano

I came across one of the essay from this book in a lit magazine. I started reading it because I knew Michele was a Chicago author and sometimes taught in my program and then just got sucked in. I think that essay ("In the Subjunctive Mood") is really the best one in the book, but all her writing is smart and clever and just really put together. I bought the book and read the rest of it while I was in Italy. Even though she was writing about her time in Spain, there was a lot just about travel and the idea of "translating" that umm.... translated to my own experiences abroad. Like, The Horizontal World, this book is another example of a collection of essays that can each stand alone, but have deepened meanings/effects when all read together.

The book's website is also very put together.

Genre: Nonfiction, Essays

Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn

Author: Larry Colton

I was excited when I found this book in a thrift store (and surprised that I hadn't come across the title sooner) but I was also skeptical about the idea of an old white guy, an ex minor league baseball player at that, writing about an American Indian girl playing basketball. I read the introduction and first chapter ready to underline ignorant lines and write angry responses in the margin. As I continued to read, I found that Colton was indeed ignorant about a lot--he hadn't spent much, if any, time on Indian reservations before beginning the book and his original intention of course was to write about the boy's high school team, not the girl's--but he was also honest about what he didn't know and that made all the difference. In fact, I began to kind of like this old white guy. I felt like he gave a very honest and respectful portrait of the team and the girls on the team and he did so by also including his own story of how and why he was first attracted to this team and the relationship he forms with them throughout the writing of the book.

Genre: Nonfiction, Journalism
Subject: Women's Sports, American Indians

Publisher