Enrich your classroom with The Common magazine: poems, essays, stories, and images that provide fresh, global perspectives on place and placelessness, home and belonging, migration and exile.
Enrich your classroom with The Common magazine: poems, essays, stories, and images that provide fresh, global perspectives on place and placelessness, home and belonging, migration and exile.
Adapted from Curtis Bauer, The Common’s Translation Editor, and Director of Creative Writing Program and teacher of Comparative Literature at Texas Tech University.
In this exercise you will explore the multidimensionality of a poem, essay, or story by “living with” the author and translator: reading and thinking about their work every day for a week. This is a multi-step assignment so read carefully and make sure you plan in advance.
The following is a collection of resources for students and teachers exploring The Common’s works in translation; see also: resources focused on Arabic literature in English translation.
Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.
Adapted from Marilyn Sides, Senior Lecturer and Director of Creative Writing, in the Department of English and Creative Writing, Wellesley College
1) Read: Mohammed Rabie’s “Burdens,” Muhammad Khudayyir’s “The Hush Void,” and Mahmoud al-Rahabi’s “The Passing Carts,” as well as the “Contributor Notes” for these authors and their translators.
Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.
Discussion Questions:
What is your first encounter with this magazine, as an object?
What do you think about the physical and aesthetic features of the magazine: the weight, the paper stock, the cover, the cover art, the font? What, if anything, would you change?
How do you read it? In order? Piecemeal? How do you think this affects your reaction to the magazine?
How do pieces (poems, essays, stories, images) relate to each other? What is the effect of their placements on you as a reader?
Asking students to create homages to several of the works in The Common Issues 01 and 07 promotes a further exploration of the city in which they live. In fact, it requires it of them.
In Issue 01 of The Common, Ted Conover delivers an immersion essay in which he delves into the past and present of a nearly forgotten road near his home in New England. The first prompt of the semester, therefore, compels the students to write their own Conover-esque immersion essay by walking/exploring a street, building, or landmark in their city or town, seeking out written resources on this place, and gathering up the courage to probe living memory. The second prompt, handed out several months later, encourages them to become creative with what they have so far discovered in their town or city by selecting the works that most interested them inThe Common and emulating these.
Assignment:
Using these essays from The Common as inspiration, bring your completely current voice to an exploration of history; write a concise personal essay exploring your personal history or the history of a place.
“Coastlines” by Teow Lim Goh (may also be presented in conjunction with other California authors: Fante, Didion, Jeffers, Hong Kingston, Mori, Himes, etc.)
“The Teak House” by Lamtharn Hantrakul
“The Town with the Golden Future” by Will Preston (Issue 14)
Assignment:
Choose an essay from The Common and prepare and deliver an oral report in class on the piece, focusing on an aspect of craft: research, voice, style, place, point of view, and the development of the “I” character, as well as characterization of other characters in the piece.
Adapted from Rebecca Chace, Director of Creative Writing, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Assignment: Report on 2 Issues of The Common; select and discuss various, particular elements of the literary journal. 6 pages (1,800 words) minimum.
You will select and discuss 6 items, one from each of the categories below. You must write about at least one item from each issue. Choose from among:
—The Common Statement
— Fiction
— Essays
— Art
—Poetry
—Elsewhere (Bombay/Mumbai, New Poems from China, etc.)
Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.
Group Assignment & Student-led Exercise: Divide students into small groups (trios work well) and give them a week to:
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