A Girl An unnamed girl is Noboru’s date for the Tanabata Day festival. Like him, she is a university student who embraces the changes wrought by the modernization of Japan. Makiko The protagonist of the story, Makiko is a young Japanese widow living in Kyoto, Japan after World War II. She struggles to raise her…
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Aftermath by Mary Yukari Waters – Summary
“Aftermath” begins with the protagonist Makiko watching her seven-year-old son Toshi playing dodge-ball in Imamiya Park. As she watches Toshi play the “new American” game, Makiko thinks about how fast Toshi is growing and worries about how quickly Japan is becoming Americanized in the years after Japan’s defeat in World War II. She particularly worries…
The Thrill of the Grass – Analysis
‘‘The Thrill of the Grass’’ is not an entirely realistic story, nor is it a work of pure fantasy. Like much of Kinsella’s fiction, it falls somewhere in between, portraying not the world as it is, but rather, the world as Kinsella imagines it might be. Kinsella writes in his introduction to ‘‘The Thrill of…
The Thrill of the Grass – Setting
Baseball Strike and Free Agency The 1981 baseball strike was largely fought over the issue of free agency. Baseball owners had become accustomed to thinking of players as property—assets to be traded at will. However, during the decade leading up to the strike, players had been lobbying to obtain the rights of more modern employees,…
The Thrill of the Grass – Literary Devices
Magical Realism Magical realism is a term used to describe those fictions in which the fantastic becomes part of a story in which events are otherwise narrated using the objective tone that characterizes realistic fiction in general. It is often associated with Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges or Gabriel Garcı´a Ma´ rquez, although…
The Thrill of the Grass – Themes
Family The characters in this story are, for the most part, older people for whom family takes a place of central importance in their lives. The narrator not only loves his wife but his love of baseball is closely tied to his relationships with his daughters and granddaughter. One daughter, who lives in Japan, is…
The Thrill of the Grass – Characters
Maggie Maggie is the narrator’s wife, and the mother of his daughters. They have been together for so long that Maggie ‘‘knew me when I still dreamed of playing professionally.’’ Although they have a warm and affectionate marriage, the narrator does not tell his wife where he goes at night because, although she loves him,…
The Thrill of the Grass – Summary
The story opens in 1981, about a month into the baseball strike that truncated the season. The first-person narrator, who remains unnamed, finds the absence of baseball ‘‘a disruption to the psyche.’’ The narrator is an older man who considers himself a ‘‘failed shortstop’’ and who once had aspirations of playing professionally. On his way…
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Analysis
Collier’s ‘‘Sweet Potato Pie’’ is a delightfully subtle, but optimistic, story that portrays the love between two brothers. At its heart, however, it shows the legacy of poverty that hangs over one African American family, even over the one member who has ostensibly escaped that legacy. The structure of the story is also quite remarkable….
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Setting
Sharecropping The practice of sharecropping consists of tenant farmers who pay the landowner with a portion, or share, of the crops they harvest on their rented land. The system became common in the South during the Reconstruction era (the period following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery). It was a…