So far this semester we've been reading a lot of poetry and your independent choice books. This module will lead you into the realm of the contemporary, with a focus on food, written outside of the English-speaking world (something the College Board does not much value).

You'll start by reading an overview about Korean literature and then a story called "Wizard Bakery." After that, you'll have a choice about a second story to read: "When My Wife Was a Shiitake," "The Park Bench," "Sharing," or "The Kiso Wayfarer."

There's a world literature theorist named David Damrosch who says that a world literature text provides a specific reading experience that operates "across three dimensions":

The text provides the reader:

"a sharp difference[s] we enjoy for its sheer novelty;
a gratifying similarity[ies] that we find in the text or project onto it;
and a middle range of what is like-but-unlike – the sort of relation most likely to make a change in our own perceptions" ("What Is World Literature 12).

I hope you enjoy what you read in this module!