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Coming Of Age Around The World

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Any kind of major war is important for students to know. I have found three short stories from the book, Coming of Age around the World that I believe we should integrate into our curriculum for the students to read and learn about. All three of these stories are about different wars from around the world. The first one is “In the Shadow of War” by Ben Okri, it takes place in Nigeria after their Civil War. The next story is the “Last Gamble” from one of Andrew X. Pham’s memoirs. This selection is about a family escaping Vietnam after the Communist took over. The final selection takes place in Northern Ireland with the British taking over. It is called, “Everything in this Country Must” by Colum McCann. Our students need to understand what is …show more content…

It starts out with a young boy, named Omovo, looking out the window at soldiers drinking and a woman covered in black walk into the forest. He then goes out and the soldiers stop him to ask him if he knows the woman with the black veil. He then learns that she is a spy who helps the enemies. The next morning after he woke up and got a glimpse of the woman heading to the woods with the soldiers following behind her without getting seen. Omovo runs to follow after them. The soldiers seem to know where the woman is going and take a different path to try and capture her. Meanwhile, Omovo keeps following her and sees that she has a red basket on her head. She goes into a cave with other men, women, and children touching and thanking her, she comes back out without the basket and is on her way back to the city. Omovo can hear heavy breathing and coughing behind him so he hides behind a tree and watches the soldiers run past him. Not long after, he heard a scream and the soldiers questioning the woman. After she would not answer, he heard a gunshot and quickly got up and tried to run out of the forest, but trips on a tree root and blacks out. When he wakes up, he realizes that he is back in his bed and could hear the radio on in the other room. He walks out and sees his father drinking with three of the soldiers that he talked to the other day. His father says that the soldiers brought him back from the …show more content…

In the 16th century, Henry VIII turned England into a Protestant country, but most of the Irish people remained Catholic. Being that no one listened to the king, he sent in soldiers to push them to change religions. The land owners fled their land when the soldiers came in. New protestant colonists came in to settle on the island. The Catholics rebelled and tried to get their country back, but were not successful and were left without power and land. While Great Britain gained full control of the whole island in the 19th century, Ireland has joined Wales, England, and Scotland to become the United Kingdom. Around the world, countries are fighting and always wanting more. All of these three stories from the book contain war. I believe our students should be more aware of these wars around us. The Nigerian Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the conflict between Northern and Southern Ireland are all important and have a lot of history behind them. Allowing our students to read these stories gives them the opportunity to research more about the

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