Tagged: books

Alison Swan is a poet and an award winning environmentalist. She's adjunct professor at Western Michigan University.

Not too long ago Swan published her first collection of poetry, Dog Heart. Michigan Radio's Jennifer White sat down with Swan to talk about the new book.

Swan says she finds her inspiration from the wild places of Michigan.

“I think if, I were to describe the feeling that I have, being in the wooded dunes of Saugatuck or on the beach at Lake Michigan, I feel at the same time larger and smaller. I feel my mind and my imagination expand, but I feel myself as an individual in the world, kind of become relatively insignificant.”

Scott Martelle is a journalist and author. His new book Detroit: A Biography chronicles the history of the city from the 17oo's to the present day. He was also a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and the Detroit News.

Martelle believes there was a point in history when Detroit had an opportunity to diversify its manufacturing.

“Just after World War II when the auto industry was retooling from war footing from making tank and armaments back to making motor vehicles, they really had a chance then to change the industrial fabric of Detroit. So they missed a crucial opportunity then.”

Just over a month ago, I talked about an interesting controversy in the Plymouth-Canton Community School district, a middle-to-upper-middle area of western Wayne County.

The superintendent suddenly banned a popular novel, Graham Swift’s "Waterland", from the Advanced Placement, or AP English curriculum. "Waterland", first published almost 30 years ago, is a highly acclaimed book which has to do with storytelling and history, and which shows how everything is influenced by what came before.

They’ve been using it in Plymouth-Canton for years. But suddenly the book was pulled, and there were hints that the district was also going to ban Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel "Beloved."  Why? Well, it seemed one couple complained.

The Plymouth-Canton school district will not ban Waterland from its Advanced Placement English curriculum.

Graham Swift’s novel is the second book this year the Plymouth-Canton school district put on trial. The district considered banning Toni Morrison’s Beloved last month, but decided against it.

A committee voted anonymously in a closed meeting not to ban the books after hearing from teachers, students and parents during public meetings. (Since their votes are anonymous, we do not know if it was a unanimous vote.)

AP English teacher Brian Read, who has taught Beloved and Waterland for 10 years, says both books deal with the effects of trauma, and contain some mature content of a sexual nature. He says he and his colleague don't choose books because they're sensational, or because there's offensive material in it.

"We choose them because they’re really great works of literature and they really work well in our curriculum, they work well with other pieces that we’re teaching. So I’ll absolutely teach it again and I’m glad that I have that opportunity to teach it again."

Read says both books are worth fighting for, and he’ll continue to defend the books if they come under fire again.

Another novel taught in the Plymouth-Canton school district is up for discussion this week.

The district considered banning Toni Morrison’s Beloved last month, but decided against it. Now the novel in question is Waterland by Graham Swift, which has been taught in the district for the past decade.