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[My Name is Immaterial]

My first day of my "Introduction to American Religious Culture" class starts tomorrow, but I'm being proactive, and looking over the syllabus today, and grabbing the books off of Amazon. There are two required reads, but then we have the option of choosing one book out of five, which we will have to write a 10 to 12 page paper on at the end of the quarter. I've only heard of one, and wanted Bay12's opinions.

• My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok. It's a novel about a Jewish boy in a cloistered community and his struggle between his god and his art.
• Black Elk Speaks, by Black Elk. It's by a Lokota medicine man, and about... I'm not quite sure. His "searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth", apparently.
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. It's the autobiography of Malcolm X, a famous African-American activist.
• Stranger At the Gate, by Mel White. It's about a gay Christian man and his struggle with that.
• Dead Men Walking, by Sister Helen Prejean. It's by a nun who was the spiritual adviser to a murderer sentenced to death, and her "spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment."

So, Bay12, which book do you recommend?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Man, you guys are no help.

[LordBucket]

Having never read any of them I'd personally probably choose Black Elk Speaks, for three reasons. First, jews, blacks and gays are socially protected groups and I'm personally kind of tired of hearing about them. It's not unlikely that your professor is tired of hearing about them too. That leaves options 2 and 5, but 5 sounds terribly morbid to me. Leaving 2. Which you point out that you're not even entirely sure what it's about. And if others are also not sure, they're unlikely to choose it over the more familiar, socially obvious choices. Being the student who chose the topic that 90% of the other students didn't choose has its advantages when it comes time to papers being graded.

Second, I've read some of Carlos Casteneda's works, and if they're at all representative of drug-induced, american shamanistic/magical religious writing...#2 might make for an entertaining read. As in, entertaining enough to be worth reading even if you weren't taking the class.

Third, presumably you're taking the class for a grade and a piece of paper, but it wouldn't be so terrible to come away actually having been exposed to something new, right? From your description, I'm guessing that of the five groups, jews, blacks, gays, nuns, and Lakota medicine men...that last one is probably the group you know the least about.

So, Black Elk Speaks.

If you wanted a second option, I might suggest Malcolm X because he actually does have an interesting story. An awful lot of activists generally seem to simply be zealots with an agenda. Malcolm X was a zealot with an agenda who then actually grew as a person and changed some of his worldviews. That makes him more interesting in my opinion.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Man, you guys are no help.

I take this back immediately. Thanks so much for the advice, LordBucket!

[nenjin]

I think I recall reading Black Elk Speaks in my high school social studies class. Been a while. But that's what I'd pick off that list anyways. Probably followed by the Biography of Malcolm X.

[Orange Wizard]

Gonna be honest here, they all sound terrible.

[My Name is Immaterial]

That's probably my fault.

[Darkmere]

A friend of mine took a sociology minor because one of our professors was pretty awesome and roped him into it. There was a foundation in psychology to get some of the concepts across, which led to a joint class of the two departments being taught called "Death and Dying" or "Morbidity and Mortality." When he told me about it, I had the same mental recoil some of you reading now just did.

But over the course of the semester he kept telling me stories about what they'd talk about. How other cultures deal with it, traditional views of remembrance of those we've lost. They went to a funeral home and wrote eulogies for each other. By the end of it he'd been able to put some kind of boundary on death itself, and looking it in the face for so long brought him some measure of peace about it all.

Similarly, I came from a small town with small minds and lots of hate. One of our high school wellness assignments was a pair of books about HIV, one from a researching physician who had infected himself, and another from a different doctor who specifically treated homosexual patients in the 80's when HIV was still a "gay disease." I tried to skim the books for important notes, wanting to avoid anything uncomfortable, you know. Turned out that was my first exposure to gay culture as "something other normal people do" instead of "horrible thing that's wrong and you should never even mention in public." I was forced to re-evaluate my entire opinion about sexuality from that book. Oh and there were some AIDS facts in it, too. Anyway...

TL;DR When in doubt, pick whatever makes you the most uncomfortable. Those things make you grow as a person. Odds are as a bonus your profs will respect the hell out of you for pushing your boundaries, too.

[martinuzz]

I can wholeheartedly recommend reading any work of Chaim Potok, he is an amazingly vivid writer.

[Vector]

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