Week 5
Class Ground Rules
Read all the assignments before class.
Keep yourself on mute unless called on.
Raise your hands electronically.
Focus your comments only on the question at hand rather than straying to other parts of the story.
Discuss the author's story, not your own story.
Refrain from offering a review of the whole story or jumping to the end.
Try to support your comments by referring to details from the text.
Listen to and respond to others with respect.
"After “Ghosts and Empties” was published, a woman in my neighborhood became terrified at how I was looking in people’s windows, which both horrifies and secretly pleases me." -- Lauren Groff
READ (at least twice): "Ghosts and Empties," pp. 1-14. (Published in Florida, 2018.)
A mother walks the neighborhood to cool down from a outburst at her children.
Think About:
First person narration.
Language/images that delighted or moved you.
Any rhyme, rhythm, reason of the images she sees as she runs?
Humor
What do we learn about the walker, and what does the walker learn about herself.
The title.
Any relationship between the song “Graceland” and the story?
Purely Optional
Listen to a short video (14 min., 24 sec.) in which Lauren Groff discusses her collection Florida.
Ghosts & Empties in the writer's voice
The story title "Ghost and Empties" comes from Paul Simon's "Graceland."
Graceland lyrics.pdf