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Global Perspectives

The term "global village" appears to have been coined by Wyndham Lewis in his book America and Cosmic Man in 1948. As intelligent and concerned citizens of Western nations, we are increasingly being called upon to expand our cultural horizons. Aside from travel to other lands for business or pleasure and the study of foreign languages and world history, surely the best way of coming to an understanding of the world beyond us is through reading the best of what accomplished authors from other nations have written. Often writers of fiction and memoir not only convey the most direct and authentic sort of information about what life is like, for example, in India or Nigeria, about the sights, sounds, and smells of the place, about the beliefs and customs, but also they offer the most sensitive and powerful insights into their world. In reading the books in this series we will be taken outside of ourselves, perhaps outside of our comfort zones, at least temporarily, and we will leave the books feeling that we have been invited in, that we have become, briefly at least, insiders, citizens of another place and ethos, participants in another culture. "Global Perspectives" theme materials created for Let's Talk About It by Ron McFarland, University of Idaho, 2007. Books for this series include:

  • Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (China)
  • Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (South Africa)
  • Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (Chile)
  • Graceland by Chris Abani (Nigeria)
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
  • The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway (Australia)
  • The Space between Us by Thrity Umrigar (India)
  • Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire (Cuba)
  • The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber (Iran/Jordan)
  • The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (India)
  • Climbing the Mango Tree by Madhur Jaffrey (India)
  • The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (China)

   Global Perspectives Program Materials in zip format