Rebecca Reads

The introduction to my volume of Zora Neale Hurston’s retelling of the Biblical Exodus calls this a “badly flawed novel” and I’m sure it is. Hurston is basing her novel on a Biblical tale that lacks strong women characters, and she’s trying to make it feel modern. The introduction also criticizes the stereotyped way in [...]

After I finished reading Husain Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights (reviewed here), I still felt unfulfilled. I turned to The Arabian Nights II to get Haddawy’s translation of some of the traditional stories. In the end, I now have a better appreciation for the first volume of stories: those first stories were by far [...]

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is almost a genre by itself. The traditional Mexican recipes are provided in a novel format as it tells the story of Tita, Tita’s overbearing mother, and Tita’s lover, Pedro, who marries her sister. And yet, it’s not a cook book, and I don’t think it’s not an [...]

It’s bawdy. It’s erotic. It may be inappropriate for young minds. It’s irreverent, especially considering a strict Islamic world such as the 1500s when they were written. And yet, The Arabian Nights has historically been an immensely popular collection of stories.
As The New Lifetime Reading Plan reminds me, these were one of the first “best-sellers,” [...]

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is a magical friend to children, with her upside-down house and delicious cookies that are always waiting for you. She’s also a wonderful help to parents, who often don’t know how to solve the problems of parenthood.
When I was young I loved learning Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s “cures” for naughty children’s problems, such as not [...]