ENG 209: The development of the short story as a literary form. Reading, discussion, and analysis of short stories by major writers such as Chekhov, Gilman, Joyce, Hemingway, Wright, O'Connor, Baldwin, Carver, Oates, and others, in relation to their social and intellectual milieu. Class hrs. 3. Prerequisites: ENG 101, 102 (Comp & Lit I & II).
This class will be conducted in accordance with WCC's Student Code of Conduct and Academic Honesty Policy:
Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated under any circumstances.
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An Introduction to Fiction (Eleventh Edition), by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Giola
ISBN 10: 0-20568788-1
ISBN 13: 978-0-205-68788-6
My favorite memory of my grandmother would have to be her cooking. All grandmother's know how to cook and what to cook it. Their food is always delicious. My grandmother was known for her pot roast. I dont know how she made, but it was always a great treat for me. I remember loving to go over to her house just to get her food. I recall my mother trying to make it and following my grandmother's instructions, but it didnt taste the same as if grandmother made it. I use to believe that all grandmothers would share recipes since they all seem to be amazing cooks.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory of my grandmother is making meatballs with her. Every Sunday my whole family used to get together for an early dinner that always consisted of pasta and meatballs. I remember constantly asking my mom if we can go early so I can help my Grandma cook. Usually all the harassment worked and we would arrive just in time to roll the meatballs. I remember sitting in the kitchen with her baby blue cabinets, watching every move my grandmother made. I would copy my grandmother's moves as we rolled meatballs together and would smile when she hollered at me for making one too big. But nothing compared to my Grandma’s face after the meatballs were done cooking. We each got to sneak a meatball into our mouths before dinner to taste our delicious work.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory of my grandmother is when she knit me a sweater with a gigantic stop sign on it. It was black, had a big, red traditional stop sign. I wore it practically everyday growing up because I loved it so much. She made it because she thought I was so cute that everyone should stop and look at her grandson. It always warmed my heart to make my grandmother proud and I miss it everyday. I still have the sweater that Adele Seelig knit and Im thinking about making a newer version of it that's my size.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory of my grandmother was spending my summers with her at her house in London. Every summer up until she passed away I would go spend my summers with her and I loved eating the fruit lychees with her, riding my bike while she watched from her bedroom window, picking the apples off the apple tree, which grew in her backyard and traveling on the double-decker buses to go buy fresh fruit from the market, while letting the wind blow in my face and listen my grandmothers stories she would tell me about my aunts and uncles.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory with my grandmother is when I came home from Germany. My Oma is from Germany and came to this country when she met my grandfather. She was so excited that I went to visit the place where she grew up. When I came home she jumped up so quickly and hugged me for so long. I remember her asking me "how did you like my country." We talked about my trip and she told me so many stories from when she was my age. It made me feel closer to her in a way.
ReplyDeleteI know this is going to sound funny and a little bit mean, but my favorite thing about my grandmother is how completely drunk she gets at family functions. As a kid, I noticed that at big family events my Grammy would always be dancing, even if no one else was. Her favorite dance was the "Electric Slide." She seemed to never stop dancing, until she eventually passed out on a couch or armchair. From a kid's perspective, nothing seems out of the ordinary with any of that. Grammy just dances alot and then gets sleepy, no big deal. I also noticed that after dancing, my mom never let my Grammy drive home, and she'd tell me to hide her car keys. Again, nothing weird about that, I got to play hide-the-keys; which is an awesome game for a 5 year old. As I got older I began to learn more about why I couldn't drink from Grammy's glass and why she always fell asleep on things that weren't a bed. The more insight I gained on the situation, the funnier it became. Now at the ripe old age of 73, my Grammy continues to get hammered at every holiday dinner and family gathering, and I get to write about it for a college homework assignment.
ReplyDeleteJonathan, this is priceless!! Your Grammy sounds like she could be the star of a marvelous short story! . . . or novel!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory of my grandma is going over her house to eat. Being Italian she loved to cook and knows how to very well. Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter were popular holiday visits where grandma would have the whole family over and she would cook all day for everyone. She didn't cook because she had to, she cooked because she loved to. We all love her cooking and wouldn't trust any other family member to host the holiday dinners. My favorite thing that she makes is meatballs. For some reason no one can beat grandmas meatballs. Being at grandma's house for the holidays is a family tradition that I cherish and of coarse my grandma's cooking.
ReplyDeleteLike many of your postings, my grandmother was a fabulous in the kitchen. Her angel food cake was "light as a feather;" her pie crusts were so light and flakey the layers could be "separated with a feather;" her butter-laden strawberry shortcake was served hot from the oven and covered with icebox-cold strawberries fresh from the field "down the street," sliced, and dripping with sweet syrup from their white sugar marinade, then topped with a mound of hand whipped heavy cream. But what I remember most were the gingerbread men she made every Christmas. She would make about two dozen, every one decorated with exquisite detail. Silver buttons. Red boots with white trim. Stocking hats of red or green sugar sprinkle. Each hand with a frosting mitten. Some had "red hot" candy buttons that burned my mouth in the same bite as soft gingerbread and hand-whipped butter frosting. She arrived at our house either Christmas morning or Christmas Eve with a HUGH box (the same box every year), with her gingerbread men all lined up like dutiful soldiers. My brother and I were allowed one gingerbread man each day -- because "your grandmother put hours of work into these and you're not going to gobble them down in two minutes." At Christmas, and every day after (until they were all gone), my mother would take the box down from on top of the refrigerator (put there so we couldn't reach it). We would lift the lid and there were the gingerbread men, waiting patiently. In my imagination, I heard them calling out, "Choose me! Choose me!" My brother and I sometimes fought over a gingerbread man -- as no two were the same. I liked the ones with the sugar sprinkles most. I also like the ones with the red hots for buttons. I always felt sorry for the gingerbread men who were last to be chosen -- silly, now, to think of it. We also ate the gingerbread men in a particular order -- right leg, left leg, right hand, left hand, head, then the body.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother died when I was in my early 20's. She had dementia, and didn't know me the last few years of her life. It's always been my greatest sorrow, not to have known her in my adult years. One Christmas, and I don't remember what prompted her to do it, she wrapped up her gingerbread man cookie cutter and gave it to me. She could have given me diamonds and gold, and I wouldn't have been as touched and pleased as I was to have her pass her aluminum gingerbread man cookie cutter down to me. Well, I'm 53 years old now, and she had that cookie cutter for many years before I came along. It's one of my most prized possessions -- that now bent, decrepit cookie cutter that hasn't been used in years.
My favorite memory of my grandmother was when I was very little. I actually lived with her, so every night at bedtime, she would make up fairy tale stories to tell me. I loved them. I would often need the stories to fall asleep at night. They were usually about princesses and princes, or fairies, and some kind of hero. She was really good at making up stories on the spot.
ReplyDeleteEven though my grandmother is over 95 years old, she does not seem like it at all. She is able to remember things that happened yesterday and things that happened many years ago. She knows everyone‘s birthday and even their middle names. However, the thing that I admire most about my grandmother is that she is able to find humor in just about anything. There is one story that I often remember and it always makes me laugh. It happened about 5 years ago when my grandmother fell in her apartment and the EMS came to take her to the hospital. These medical people asked her a series of questions to make sure that she was lucid. One question that they asked was. “Who is the President of the United States? My grandmother responded, “It’s George Bush, but why do you want to talk about him when I am sick already”.
ReplyDeleteOMG, Adam, this is hysterical!!! LOL!!!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory with my Grandmother is playing an old turkish card game her mother had taught her. It was called pastra, and the family would often gather around to watch us play. The real fun was that my cousin Daniel and I would cheat - he would sneak behind her with a mirror so that I could see all her cards. As I won more and more she would begin to curse in Ladino (a language derived from Spanish common among Sephardic Jews). Nona did swear in the sense of foul language, she would exclaim such things as "a las pashas tuyas" - which to my understanding is roughly translated as at your feet, and the more frustrated she got the more me and Daniel would laugh.
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