Incoming Pre-AP English II Students: Week 7 Reading Assignment

This week's stories deal with themes of prejudice, and therefore may be somewhat disturbing to some of you. Please do your best to get through one or both; you may have an opportunity to discuss your feelings in your responses next week.

• Barn Burning by William Faulkner (audiofile)
  
  The word niggard (more appropriately, niggardly) means "stingy," "ungenerously small" or "meager." (The fire the narrator's father builds is not a large fire; it gives off very little heat and light.) It is a different word than the racial slur that also begins with the letter N. (That word also appears in the story and if you find it necessary to refer to it in your response(s) next week, please substitute N-word or n-----.)


• Cathedral by Raymond Carver (no audiofile available)
  
  Don't do drugs. Stay in school. Hit the books; they don't hit back.