Honors American Literature
Independent Book/Author Project
As you have probably noticed there is a vast body of work that is considered “American Literature” and as much as I would like to share it all with you, in reality it is impossible. You will be given the opportunity to select an author and a book that you will study in depth. The authors and the books that I have selected range from classic novels to modern work, hopefully the list will meet all of our needs. We will continue to work in class on two plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Requirements:
For example, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple is heavily criticized for her use of profanity and sexually explicit material. Many people feel that the novel should not be read in schools. After reading the book, would you agree? Explain.
Due on March 18th.
I would like everyone to choose a different book/author from the following list.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Native Sun or Black Boy by Richard Wright
Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Jazz, or Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Farewell to Arms or The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Slaughterhouse Five or Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
A Prayer for Owen Meany or Cider House Rules by John Irving
Catch –22 by Joseph Heller
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (very long, but a very good book!)
Moses Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston
The following book descriptions can be found on Amazon.com. If you would like more information feel free to research books of interest.
9.
Amy Tan,author of The Joy Luck Club,
examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection
between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to
unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more
entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their
eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties.
Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these
lives of complexity and mystery.
10. A Lesson Before Dying is about a young man who
returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a
crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of
resisting.
11. The Da Vinci Code-While in Paris on business,
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call:
the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the
body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic
riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in
the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously
disguised by the painter.
12. Reservation Blues - In 1931, Robert Johnson
allegedly sold his soul to the devil, receiving legendary blues skills in
return. He went on to record only twenty-nine songs before being murdered on
August 16, 1938. In 1992, however, Johnson suddenly reappears on the Spokane
Indian Reservation and meets Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the misfit storyteller of
the Spokane Tribe. When Johnson passes his enchanted instrument to Thomas-lead
singer of the rock-and-roll band Coyote Springs-a magical odyssey begins that
will take the band from reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement
trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan.
13.
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret
Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped
around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's
fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the
town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South
Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past.
14.
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his
best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an
instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which
inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon
Birch.
15. Slaughter House Five deserves its reputation of
being a piece of great American literature. The book follows a young man, Billy
Pilgrim through his life. Billy believes aliens, tralfamadorians to be exact,
have abducted him. We assume that it's through these aliens that he learns to
time travel, a skill he frequently uses. In the book Pilgrim bounces around
time to all the various portions of his life, many times returning to World War
II where he was captured, taken prisoner, and held in slaughterhouse five in
Dresden, Germany.
16. Last of the Mohicans - In the novel, the white
woodsman Hawk-eye and his Mohican Indian comrade Chingachgook join forces to
help the daughters of a white military officer through hostile territory. The
story takes place in a colonial American setting marked by conflict between
French and English forces -- a conflict that also involves various Indian
nations
17. Native Son - Bigger Thomas is doomed,
trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven
by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension. As a young black man in
the Chicago of the '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism
that surround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of
panic, these walls begin to close in. There is no help for him--not from his
hapless family; not from liberal do-gooders or from his well-meaning yet naive
friend Jan; certainly not from the police, prosecutors, or judges. Bigger is
debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. As such, he has no
claim upon our compassion or sympathy.
18. Woman Warrior - A Chinese American woman
tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California
childhood that have shaped her identity.
19.
Moses Man of the Mountain -In this 1939 novel based on the familiar story
of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with
the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power,
redemption, and faith. Narrated in a mixture of biblical rhetoric, black
dialect, and colloquial English, Hurston traces Moses' life from the day he Is
launched into the Nile river in a reed basket, to his development as a great
magician, to his transformation into the heroic rebel leader, the Great
Emancipator. From his dramatic confrontations with Pharaoh to his fragile
negotiations with the wary Hebrews, this very human story is told with great
humor, passion, and psychological insight--the hallmarks of Hurston as a writer
and champion of black culture.
20.
Gone With the Wind - Sometimes only remembered for the epic motion
picture and "Frankly ... I don't give a damn," Gone with the Wind
was initially a compelling and entertaining novel. It was the sweeping story of
tangled passions and the rare courage of a group of people in Atlanta during
the time of Civil War that brought those cinematic scenes to life. The reason
the movie became so popular was the strength of its characters--Scarlett
O'Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley Wilkes--all created here by the deft hand of
Margaret Mitchell, in this, her first novel.
21.Poisonwood
Bible- In 1959, Nathan Price, a
fierce, evangelical Baptist, takes his four young daughters, his wife, and his
mission to the Belgian Congo -- a place, he is sure, where he can save needy
souls. But the seeds they plant bloom in tragic ways within this complex
culture. Set against one of the most dramatic political events of the twentieth
century -- the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium and its devastating
consequences -- here is New York Times-bestselling author Barbara
Kingslover's beautiful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable epic that chronicles
the disintegration of family and a nation.
22.
Catch-22 - At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering
bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his
skin from the horrible chances of war.
23.
Born on the Fourth of July, by Ron Kovic is a riveting, true
autobiographical story of the life of a young man who leaves his small town
after high school to enter the harsh Vietnam War to honor his country. He tells
his story of the horrors that he had to face and watch as a soldier confronted
with many difficult situations. While serving his nation, he gets badly injured
in action and is forced to stop fighting and go to the hospital.
24.
The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni
Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America
whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who
prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people
will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the
nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment
25.
Jazz- In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good
things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty
products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife,
Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and
obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from
the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.
26.
A Thousand Acres -Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over
his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three
daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves
Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic
about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic
drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on
a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders. In this winner of
the 1991 National
Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Smiley captures the essence
of such a life with stark, painful detail.