Hi all,
I've been asked to run a lecture on historical fiction short stories. There is currently a short story on the syllabus, but last year only 2/40 students said they enjoyed reading this story, so I have been given permission to pick another story for this year. There are, however, some specific parameters that this story needs to fit into:
- The setting is historical. This may sound obvious but I want to clarify that this includes both stories that were contemporary at time of writing and have since become historical (eg written in the 50s, about the 50s), and stories that have always been historical fiction (eg written in the 1950s about the 1850s)
- It has to be a short story, completely standalone.
- It doesn't have to be squeaky-clean PC but keep it reasonable. Saying this one because my first thought was Hemmingway, which I was immediately told is ruled out because of characters such as "Sam the N****r", who is referred to as such pretty regularly in the story he appears in. We're looking for the middle ground between completely non-offensive to the point of parody and I, a white(ish) woman, discussing a character who is referred to almost exclusively with a racial slur to a class that is mostly POC.
This might not seem like a very strict parameter but I have been looking for about 4 days now and not found anything that fits all of these, so I am turning to reddit.
Any recs?
Thanks!
by Ok_Student_3292
2 Comments
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) is a short story by American writer and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce,[
The Doobie Brothers wrote a song about it, I Cheat the Hangman.
The Lodger (originally written as a short story in 1911) by Marie Belloc Lowndes is an early psychological thriller inspired by the Jack the Ripper case. The female protagonist drives the story through a lens of Victorian misogyny and the culture of violence against women, and how male-driven institutions have a tendency to disregard women’s concerns as “hysterical” when it was Mrs Bunting’s keen insight into the nature of the suspect’s crimes that allowed her to recognize his danger long before any men took notice.