The New Yorker: The Man in the Black Suit
by Stephen King

Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suit” felt like a conflict between two genres. On the one side is the magical realistic perspective of a child; the other is the science fiction questioning of what if. The use of both genres ultimately creates an [...]

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East of the Web: The Daughters of the Late Colonel
by Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield’s “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” explores the dynamics between a father and his two daughters. Gender issues ensue as Mansfield entails the notion of the inactive woman in a patriarchal society.
Daughters Josephine and Constantia have devoted their entire lives to “looking [...]

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Fiesta, 1980
by Junot Diaz

Before Junot Diaz received acclaim for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” he was better known in fiction circles for his short stories about immigrants and the American dream. In “Fiesta, 1980,” Diaz writes about the struggles of an immigrant family as they wake up from a nightmare in Santo Domingo [...]

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Grace Paley: “Wants”

Through the course of three decades, American writer Grace Paley grabbed reader attention by writing about the lives of Jewish, Hispanic, and black families of New York.
The women of Paley’s stories often live in the same diaspora—the lone woman abandoned by a man. “Wants” is no different, trailing a divorcee narrator who has [...]

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North Dakota State University: Cathedral
by Raymond Carver
If simple plots in stories really are the most evocative then Raymond Carver has always hit the mark with his highly regarded piece “Cathedral.” First published in 1981 in Atlantic Monthly, this story is essentially about emotionally inaccessible people who manage to find a strange yet genuine connection.
“Cathedral” [...]

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