Waywords Studio
Wanderings on Literature and Language
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“Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Waywords produces a web of programs and media designed to improve our thinking in democratic action, in critical literacy, in global understanding. We provoke, inspire, and wrestle with the ambiguities and richness of human thinking, from times modern to ancient.
While offering serious educational support for those who want it, Waywords entertains and engages with surprising takes on a wide range of global topics, from Western social trends to modern mythological thinking.
Criticism & Reviews
The Waywords podcasts and blog explore the workings of global literatures, language, and mythology through a social-epistemic rhetoric. Book reviews explore a wide range of genre, era, and region.
Fiction & Verse
Original prose includes verse, short fiction, work from the ImageMaker cosmogony, the Sam & Nadi English learners series, published collections like Unwoven, and audio drama.
Teaching & Learning
Programs to support students in lifelong literacy training, Advanced Placement® Literature, IB® Theory of Knowledge, philosophy, composition and critical reading, and English language learning.
Esmond and Flesh
It is as if the body, the flesh of pubescence around him, the skin of slow-decay in adults, asserts itself.
The Simple Act of Noticing
Finding more from our reading isn’t as hard as you think. It begins with what we already know how to do.
“Nervous Conditions” by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Dangarembga’s semi-autobiographical story of a young woman maturing through Rhodesian politics, school, and family prejudices is a fresh and significant local lens where all share responsibility.
Reading: “Rebellion” from Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’
Still another famous writer has posed the Le Guin question, and he did it in one of Russia’s most famous novels, The Brothers Karamazov. Here it is.
“Superman Smashes the Klan” by Gene Luen Yang
Yang’s update on the classic Superman radio play in a new medium is worthy and worthwhile, a solid take on identity and community with new insights into the Man of Steel.
Otium and The Moral Philosopher – William James
Le Guin leans on an essay by William James, but what does that have to do with all our garden talk? It’s about our blind spots and our privilege.
Barzelletta for the 4th of July
It depends on who you ask and when: the barzelletta was a 15th-16th century Italian poem created mostly as secular song, meant to entertain with rhyme, pun, and word play while perhaps offering some didactic lessons.
Marvell’s Garden and Ours – Otium
Speaking of links back to Andrew Marvell’s poetry–weren’t we?–we expose some of our misapprehensions about nature, leisure, and work. And we read Marvell’s poem “The Garden” while we think green thoughts about it.
Vaster Than Empires – Le Guin
What does it mean to embrace “Other”? And how might we understand carpe diem if we truly had “world enough and time?” Le Guin shows us in her famous science fiction short story.
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