Hey everyone, I need some help on a performance I have to do for speech class. I have to choose a piece of Literature that I want to share with the class that has an important message. It could be a chapter of a novel, short story, essay, journal, fiction, non fiction, poetry (slam, spoken wood, lyrical), or dramatic literature (scripted for the screen, television, or stage i.e. a scene or monologue). It needs to be around 8 minutes long. Does anyone have some suggestions of a good piece I can do for class? Any suggestions would be helpful.

Do something you can be excited about.

I won a contest by reading one of the entries in this book:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...SBN=0156118610
It's really funny, especially if you know any Hemingway.

Perhaps you could find a G. K. Chesterton essay or short story that takes eight minutes to read.

This seems really personal (only you know what you want to talk about.) If it were me, I'd do something like "Eve's Apology in Defense of Women" from Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (protofeminism and a window into a Renaissance woman's opinions that are counter to what seems typical). Or for something more modern, Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain." (on becoming jaded and remembering what's important in life).

Or maybe Raymond Carver's short short "Popular Mechanics" alongside the section of the Bible with the story of Solomon's justice (the baby and two women claiming to be the mother). (selfishness. Might be too short though, because I think the Carver story is almost flash fiction if I remember right)

If most of your grade is on "performance," I would consider doing a poem though, since it takes a lot more skill to read a poem well (and if you practice, it will probably sound more like a performance).

You could do:

A selection of sonnets that are on the same subject. I've always been fascinated by people who manage to write poetry about great personal loss, like losing a child. William Wordsworth's "Surprised by Joy," and Ben Jonson's "On my First Son" cover that subject. I think Anne Bradbury wrote a sonnet like that too, and John Donne wrote one on losing his wife (but I can't remember the names of these).

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." (Could be an awsome performance but would take guts. Says a lot about being an outsider, ie, a homosexual in a straight world. I had a professor (who was a beat poet himself and had been at the original reading at the Six Gallery) read a large section in class and it was really memorable.

Lots by John Donne, who sounds amazing when people bother to practice and read him right. My favorite poems by him are "Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward" and "Aire and Angels". He's got lots of longer works though if you need something longer.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children." (says lots on child labor)

Or how about a selection from an autobiography or diary entry? The Narrative of Frederick Douglass or The Diary of Anne Frank come to mind.

The time, I am sure, has come and gone, but I am sure everyone would be delighted by a T.C. Boyle short story.

"Greasy Lake"

I read it a couple years ago, and I still remember the opening with a bunch of "badass" kids in their mom's station wagon. Classic point of view where who they thought they were and who they really were did not connect.