All About Books discussion

I am looking for Short stories written in the second-person POV from around the world, i.e in world literature. Any ideas?

what do you mean fro POV - or second person narrator? I don't think I get what you mean

LauraT wrote: “what do you mean fro POV—or second person narrator? I don’t think I get what you mean”

Second-person means it is written with “you” as the subject/protagonist. A classic example is Lorrie Moore’s short story “How to Be an Other Woman” (Goodreads won’t let me link to it, but Google & you’ll find several PDFs freely available), which begins almost like a set of instructions and then goes on to tell the story of what happens to “you” as you develop an affair with a married man. (Sometimes including further instructions, such as “Get tears in your eyes.”)

[Moore is an American writer, btw, so I don’t think her work fits Hamed’s request.]

spoko wrote: "LauraT wrote: “what do you mean fro POV—or second person narrator? I don’t think I get what you mean”

Second-person means it is written with “you” as the subject/protagonist. A classic example is ..."

Spoko, I have read her second person works, I like them. Thank you. And I am open to American works as well, just not the obvious ones, but of course our definition of obvious might be different :) by obvious I mean, like Hawthorne has one called (the haunted mind), or Updike has one called "How to love America and leave it at the same time" or something like that.

Longer than a short story, but Italo Calvino’s short novel If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler is a frequently sited second person POV book.

Some suggestions:

· Jamaica Kincaid—“Girl” (https://tinyurl.com/jamaicakincaidgirl)

· Junot Diaz—“Alma” (https://tinyurl.com/junotdiazalma) and “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” (https://tinyurl.com/junotdiazcheaters...)

· Jennine Capó Crucet—“How to Leave Kialeah” and “Resurrection, or: The Story behind the Failure of the 2003 Radio Salsa 98.1 Semi-Annual Cuban and/or Puerto Rican Heritage Festival” (both in the collection How to Leave Hialeah )

· Kerrie Kvashay-Boyle—“Saint Chola” (appears in McSweeney’s #9 as well as Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 — and there’s a video of her reading an abridged version at https://player.vimeo.com/video/2926652)

· Stacey Richter—“The Land of Pain” (appears in Twin Study )

· Pam Houston—“How to Talk to a Hunter” (appears in Cowboys Are My Weakness )

· Matt de la Pena—“How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court Into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium”

· Julie Otsuka—“Diem Perdidi” (appears in Best American Short Stories 2012 ). This one barely uses 2nd person, it’s very much about “your” mother (almost every sentence begins with the word “she”). But you are there as well.

· Bret Anthony Johnston—“Caiman” (https://tinyurl.com/bretanthonyjohnst...) — This one’s interesting, because technically it’s written in first person, but still addresses the reader directly in the second.