Customer Reviews

One World: A global anthology of short stories

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4 star:		(3)
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This anthology of short stories written by accomplished writers from around the globe is a compilation of the diverse experiences that people face in their daily lives. While the stories tug at the heart, the writing is thoughtful and provocative, the cultural insight rich, and the authors do an incredible job of transporting the reader to the various countries around the globe where these stories are set. I do not typically review books on Amazon, but felt the one review of this book is unjust in that it does not speak to the power of the stories or the immense amount of intercultural learning one gets out of reading this text.

As a professor of intercultural and comparative education, I plan to use this anthology in future courses as it speaks to realities that many people within Western cultures are not aware of or have not had exposure to. The stories are targeted and each chapter could serve as a basis for a different topic such as immigration and migration, gender and women's issues, poverty and inequality, and development.

Anyone who enjoys the writing of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri will get a great deal out of this selection of short stories by them and other writers.

One World cleary displays the talents of the greatest authors of this century. I enjoyed every single story in this book and was able to expand my list of international authors that I need to add to my library. I promise, if you love short stories you will surely enjoy this book to the max.

I felt it necessary to write a review to balance the negative review.

I teach high school literature classes, and I bought this book on a whim because the editor, Chimamnda Ngozi Adichie, is the author of a book I use in class, Purple Hibiscus. I didn't know if I would be able to use any of the short stories, but I tried a couple of them out on my kids this year ("Growing My Hair Again" and "Homeless"). The students responded quite well to them.

Granted, I would not use all of the stories with high school students--some are not appropriate and some are beyond their maturity--but it's a nice book to have on my shelf and to use to broaden the experiences of a bunch of white midwestern kids.

I would not sit down and read the anthology cover to cover (but, really, how many people read an anthology that way anyway?) Doing so would certainly make a person rather depressed, but it is important to see another point of view in the world. It's not all "Chicken Soup for Soul" in the rest of the world.

I purchased this book because my new favorite author "Chimamanda Adichie" has a story in here and helped edit the book. I read her other work and decided to purchase this as well. It's a wonderful compilation of global proportions and perspectives. I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about other perspectives.

What a terrible disappointment this book proved to be! I will never understand why the editors of modern anthologies are so staunchly determined to focus upon the ugliest, most sordid aspects of life. Perhaps they feel that gritty realism will afford them a professional aura of intellectual gravity. Whatever the reason, this book exemplifies the trend.

The editors' introduction includes the following lines: "`One World' goes beyond the everyday notion of the globe as a physical geographic entity. Rather, we understand it as a universal idea, one that transcends national boundaries to comment on the most prevailing aspects of the human condition."

One must assume from this statement that the editors consider abject suffering to be the most prevailing aspect of the human condition. With the exception of Jhumpa Lahiri's, "The Third and Final Continent," the predominant theme in each story is misery.

This isn't a rich, cultural tapestry- it is a celebration of the global ubiquity of pain. It is unique only in the sense that it may well be the only book ever published in which two different authors provide detailed descriptions of how children's bodies may be tortured with hot chili peppers.

The editors finish the introduction with the words, "Welcome to our world." If you choose to accept their welcome and enter this dismal world, I suggest that you do so with a bottle of Prozac.

-Krista Levy