Thursday, November 20, 2008

What Novels Can Teach Us About Poverty


The Utne Reader highlights the fact that reading novels is just a good at teaching people about the global condition, especially in the realm of poverty, than non-fiction can.

From the story...

“Fiction is important because it often concerned with the basic subject matter of development,” Michael Woolcock, a professor with Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute, told PhysOrg.com. “This includes things like the promises and perils of encounters between different peoples; the tragic mix of courage, desperation, humor, and deprivation characterizing the lives of the down-trodden.”

As a brief aside, a great photo essay on the Great Depression can be found here.

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