American Writers Essay

List of American Novels for Research Project English 11H Historical/War Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane Killer Angels, Michael Shaara A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier My Brother Sam is Dead, JL Collier African-American Beloved, Toni Morrison (mature themes) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou Native Son, James Baldwin The Color Purple, Alice Walker (mature themes) Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston Malcom X (autobiography- lengthy) A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest Gaines Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin Black Boy, Richard Wright (memoir) Dystopian/Futuristic/Science Fiction Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut Catch-22, Joseph Heller The Giver, Lois Lowry Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury Realism/Naturalism/Regionalism The Call of the Wild, Jack London White Fang, Jack London O’Pioneers, Willa Cather My Antonia, Willa Cather Maggie, Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane The Jungle, Upton Sinclair Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain Miscellaneous Modern/Contemporary novels The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd. The Natural, Bernard Malamud (baseball; Jewish myth) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (set in a mental asylum) House on Mango Street, Sandy Cisneros Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (Chinese-American culture) The Help, Kathryn Stockett (set in 1960s; about African-American maids in the South) Shoeless Joe, WP Kinsella (baseball) Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger (from 1950’s; If you have an interest in world philosophy or eastern religion, you’d probably like this. ) The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (mature themes) Research Novel Lottery Preparation. Native American Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Sherman Alexie Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko Quest/Journey On the Road, Jack Kerouac The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway The Road, Cormac McCarthy Dark Romanticism The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (set in Puritan New England; challenging) ark Roma nticis m he Scarlet Letter For our project, you will read one of the books on this list and (later) research the reasons this has become a significant member of the American literary canon. (What literary elements make it unique or powerful? What impact has this work had on our history or way of thinking? ) During our next class, we will conduct a lottery so that each student has a different title. To help insure that you end up with a title that you will enjoy, please spend 20-30 minutes choosing 4 titles from the list that you will be pleased to read and research. You ARE NOT allowed to read any book that you have previously read. I strongly suggest you do some Internet searches on various titles to examine what those books are all about, and to determine if their content might appeal to you. You also need to make sure ahead of time that your choices are okay with your parents. Remember, we will draw names and choose titles, so it’s highly likely you won’t get your first choice. You may, in fact, want to come up with more than four choices! Four top choices: 1_________________________________________________________________________ 2_________________________________________________________________________ 3_________________________________________________________________________ 4_________________________________________________________________________ Please see side two for list of titles—————————————————————————–?