EQ: To What Extent does Culture Shape Identity? Literature Circle Unit, 10th Grade English **There will be some excellent opportunities to write pieces for your multi-genre project during this unit!**

Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? 1. Your culture makes you who you are, by helping to shape your identity. 2. The United States has a distinct culture, all its own. 3. Teenagers always challenge their culture. 4. It is impossible to fully identify with two cultures. 5. You can abandon some aspects (or parts) of your culture and keep others.

"Na explores issues of beauty and ethnic identity with sensitivity and wit. Her protagonist is carefully and realistically drawn; even as the novel is guided by a larger message about self-esteem, Joyce’s struggles and choices never seem predetermined for didactic purposes. This story will speak to both Asian-American teens and other adolescents dealing with issues related to the way that they look, the way they wish to be perceived, and the often painful distance between the two.–" -School Library Journal

"This is, almost in spite of itself, a novel of assimilation, a fractured chronicle of the ambivalent, inexorable movement of the children of immigrants toward the American middle class, where the terrible, incredible stories of what parents and grandparents endured in the old country have become a genre in their own right." -New York Times

"The details of Amal's family and social life are spot-on, and the book is wonderful at showing the diversity within Muslim communities and in explaining why so many women choose to wear the hijab. " — School Library Journal "[A] witty, sensitive debut." — People "A fascinating look at Islam." — Entertainment Weekly "Abdel-Fazttah makes sure her 16-year- old heroine shares common experiences with pretty much every other self-conscious, semi-awkward adolescent out there." — Associated Press

"The chief virtue of Cristina Garcia's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, the story of three generations of a Cuban family dispossessed by Castro's revolution, is that it gives us Cuba without slogans, and for that matter anti-Castro Cuban exiles without stereotypes. Garcia, born in Havana on the Fourth of July, 1958, and raised in New York City, accomplishes this by telling the highly diverse stories of the women in the del Pino family. The men are mostly on the margins or altogether off the page, though the women are haunted by them, in one case literally. Celia's husband, Jorge, leaves Cuba for medical treatment in New York and dies there, but his ghost amiably visits his fat and fiercely anticommunist daughter Lourdes, who runs a bakery in Brooklyn with an iron hand and a sweet tooth." -Entertainment Weekly

"For 15 years now, Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of the Indian and white worlds. He’s done it through various characters and genres, but “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” may be his best work yet. Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home." -New York Times

Now you will have some time to look over the books and make your own choice. You will receive your book tomorrow!