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St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Analysis

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St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Analysis
We’d heard rumors about former wolf-girls who never adapted to their new culture. It was assumed that they were returned to our native country, the vanishing woods. We liked to speculate about this before bedtime, scaring ourselves with stories of catastrophic bliss. It was the disgrace, the failure that we all guiltily hoped for in our hard beds. Twitching with the shadow question: Whatever will become of me?

***

At the insistence of Dr. Carney, I chose to start my semester by reading one of Karen Russell’s short stories, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” The story is the title tale in her collection of short stories. Russell is coming to TCNJ in December for an installment of the Visiting Writers Series, and I always find it to be a good idea to familiarize myself with authors’ works before attending their readings – Considering I’m in the class hosting the event, this is no longer an option, but a (happy!) obligation.
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It is, in a word, incredible. I spent my summer reading what I like to call “mind-melters” – you know, the books that take very little effort and are easy to read between naps at the beach. If those books were intended to give my mind a much-needed break (and they were), than this was just the short story I needed to get those thinking muscles working again. Which is totally hypocritical, considering I just said I regret reading the story so early in the semester, but if Walt Whitman can contradict himself, so can I, right?

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