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40 items

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

  Angelou, Maya

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  Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Invisible Man

  Ellison, Ralph,

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  Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity -- powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  Twain, Mark, 1835-1910,

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  Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's best friend, escapes down the Mississippi on a raft with the runaway slave, Jim. One of the iconic American novels, it caused a stir when published because of the vernacular used by Twain to characterize Jim and the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Bluest Eye

  a Novel

  Morrison, Toni. 1931-2019

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  Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Scarlet Letter

  a Romance

  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864,

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  The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge. At once retrospective and radically new, The Scarlet Letter portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity.

• Their Eyes Were Watching God

  Hurston, Zora Neale,

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  One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.

• Common Sense

  Paine, Thomas, 1737-1809

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  Presents Paine's landmark pamphlet about British rule that eventually converted millions to the idea of American independence.

• The Great Gatsby

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940,

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  Story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin" was the national drink and sex the national obsession.

• Fahrenheit 451

  Bradbury, Ray, 1920-2012,

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  In a future totalitarian state where books are banned and destroyed by the government, Guy Montag, a fireman in charge of burning books, meets a revolutionary schoolteacher who dares to read and a girl who tells him of a past when people did not…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882

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  As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized "the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions." More than any writer of his time,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Yellow Wall-paper, Herland, and Selected Writings

  Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935,

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  Sardonic and humorous, the writings of landmark American feminist and socialist thinker Charlotte Perkins Gilman were penned in response to her frustrations with the gender-based double standard that prevailed in America as the twentieth century…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Color Purple

  a Novel

  Walker, Alice, 1944-

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  A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• American Indian Stories

  Zitkala-S̈a, 1876-1938,

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  A collection of stories and essays from Yankton Dakota writer Zitkála-Sá. Published while Zitkála-Sá was at the height of her career as an artist and activist, American Indian Stories collects the author's personal experiences, the legends and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Of Mice and Men

  Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968

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  In Depression-era California, two migrant workers dream of better days on a spread of their own until an act of unintentional violence leads to tragic consequences.

• The Red Badge of Courage

  An Episode of the American Civil War

  Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900

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  Hailed as one of American literature's most influential works, The Red Badge of Courage has a young recruit during the American Civil War facing the trials and cruelties of war.

• Slaughterhouse-five, Or, The Children's Crusade

  a Duty-dance With Death

  Vonnegut, Kurt,

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  Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Kindred

  Butler, Octavia E.

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  Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sun Also Rises

  Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961

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  A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation. The story follows the flamboyant Brett Ashley and the hapless Jake Barnes as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself

  Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

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  A dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave, first published in 1845, when its author had just achieved his freedom. It is a story that shocked the world with its first-hand account of the horrors of slavery.

• The Catcher in the Rye

  Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010

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  The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes…Read moreRead more of this annotation