Back to work today and reading "Shaman" in Maxine Hong Kingston's WOMAN WARRIOR

For several years in Kentucky, I showed this German car advertisement whenever we discussed the paranormal. Given that we are reading "Shaman" about Brave Orchid's medical training in China, I couldn't help but remember the story of this advertisement and how the filmmaker noticed a strange apparition walking between the trees as he was trying to capture the car's movement. You have to look close at the screen and concentrate on the shading of the trees. Once you see it, you will surely see it and will get the same eery feeling I first got when this was brought to my attention.

I'm posting this today because it will be an introduction to superstitions, fear, cures, health, and wanting to believe in truths we tell ourselves to make meaning in our world. If anything, Maxine Hong Kingston achieves a wonderful narration of her mother's complicated perseverance before arriving to the U.S. - a life of another nation unrecognized in a new one.

I'm thrilled I put this book back on the agenda for EN 12. Every time I read it I feel enriched.