Daughter of Invention
This entertaining story from Julia Alvarez begins by relating how a mother spends her limited free time trying to realize the Great American Dream by inventing improved household gadgets. Conflict arises over her daughter Yolanda’s inspired but controversial Teacher’s Day speech. Her father, whose family suffered bloody repression in his home country, ironically tears up the speech and demands a traditional, more respectful approach. His subsequent “make-up” gift of a typewriter symbolizes that the family “inventor” role has passed on to literary-minded Yolanda. Major themes: family relationships, cultural adjustment, freedom of expression, empowerment of women, pursuit of dreams.
This story by
In this 
In this folktale (aka The Clever People), a cruel farmer is angry with his wife because she was cheated out of two cows. He promises not beat her for it if can find someone more foolish. He soon finds one: a widow who is worried about how well her dead husband is doing in Heaven. The farmer makes up for losing his cows by cheating the widow out of a bag of money and stealing a horse from her son. At the end of the story, he seems to think that it is OK to cheat foolish people.
The major themes of this early story by
This story by
An unusual aspect of this story from