A Multicultural Reader

Many Voices Literature Series a Multicultural Reader COLLECTION TWO Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler Table of Contents THEME ONE Families: Comfort and Conflict Aunt Al Young poem . 14 Tw o Kinds Amy Tan short story . 15 Piñon Nuts Dixie Salazar poem . 29 This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona Sherman Alexie short story . 31 Papi Edwidge Danticat memoir . 45 Home Training Bruce A. Jacobs poem . 55 from Aliens in America Sandra Tsing Loh monologue . 59 About Russell Rita Williams-Garcia memoir . 70 Family Grace Paley poem . 80 THEME TWO Finding My Way Without Commercials Alice Walker poem . 86 I Want to Be Miss América Julia Alvarez memoir . 90 Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler from A Choice of Weapons Gordon Parks memoir . 97 Sure You Can Ask Me A Personal Question Diane Burns poem . .106 Roots: Random Thoughts on Random Hair Tatsu Yamato personal essay . .108 Wakoski’s Petunias Diane Wakoski poem . .114 What Means Switch Gish Jen short story . .116 In Answer to Their Questions Giovanna (Janet) Capone poem . .137 from The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston memoir . .142 Style Is Quincy Troupe poem . .149 THEME THREE Defining Moments Here’s Herbie Mike Feder monologue . .154 from Black Boy Richard Wright autobiography . .161 Blink Your Eyes Sekou Sundiata poem . .171 First Love Judith Ortiz Cofer memoir . .174 Suburban Indian Pride Tahnahga poem . .182 The Baddest Dog in Harlem Walter Dean Myers short story . .184 Innocent Traveler Thom Tammaro poem . .193 Beets Tiffany Midge memoir . .195 The Lemon Tree Billiards House Cedric Yamanaka short story . 205 Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler THEME FOUR Between Two Worlds from Life on the Color Line Gregory Howard Williams autobiography . .222 Coca-Cola and Coco Frío Martín Espada poem . .237 The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl Elizabeth Wong memoir . 239 Rib Sandwich William J. Harris poem . 243 The Man to Send Rain Clouds Leslie Marmon Silko short story . 244 Notes for a Poem on Being Asian American Dwight Okita poem . 250 Why, You Reckon? Langston Hughes short story . 252 Home Pauline Kaldas poem . 259 To Each His Song Bonnie Blake short story . 261 White Lies Natasha Trethewey poem . 274 F amiliar Strangers Ray Suárez essay . 276 THEME FIVE Person to Person Kwoon Charles Johnson short story . 286 Like Mexicans Gary Soto memoir . 301 Sonia E. R. Frank short story . 307 Earth and I Gave You Turquoise N. Scott Momaday poem . 320 Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler The Teacher Who Changed My Life Nicholas Gage essay . 322 The Eve of the Spirit Festival Lan Samantha Chang short story . 327 Tw o Guitars Víctor Hernández Cruz poem . 340 The Wooing of Ariadne Harry Mark Petrakis short story . 342 THEME SIX Outside Influences Making It Stick Lawson Fusao Inada poem . 360 Indians Are a People, Not Mascots Fred Veilleux essay . 362 democracy W. R. Rodriguez poem . 373 The Fabulous Sinkhole Jesús Salvador Treviño short story . 375 Horns on Your Head Hal Sirowitz poem . 402 Adventures of an Indian Princess Patricia Riley short story . 403 Black Men and Public Space Brent Staples essay . 410 On the Subway Sharon Olds poem . 415 A Double Impulse James D. and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston memoir . 417 Melting Pot Anna Quindlen newspaper column . 425 Author Biographies . 431 Glossary of Literary Terms . 440 Index of Titles and Authors . 444 Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler Ten Thousand Things ▲▲▲▲ A Dominican-American girl who wants to become “Miss América.” An African-American man who is disturbed when white people walk faster after he appears on the sidewalk. A Chinese- German-American woman who is both amused and horrified when her father takes a mail order bride. In Many Voices, you will hear the familiar sound of English, but in tones and accents that have a distinctive ethnic flavor. The writers who make up the conversation are primarily African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American, groups that together represent nearly 40 percent of all students in the United States. But writers from other ancestries contribute as well, including those of Greek, Italian, Jewish, and Arabic heritage. An ethnic identity can make life more difficult for people, but it may also contribute much meaning and joy. The Chicano poet, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, wrote recently, “I cling to my cul- ture because it is my skin, because it is my heart, because it is my voice, because it breathes my mother’s mother’s mother into me. I am blind without the lenses of my culture.” Many of us don’t come into contact with people from other ethnic groups in meaningful ways. We may go to work and school with them, but never strike up true relationships. Literature gives us the opportunity to learn what we otherwise might never know. Against the backdrop of ethnicity, the characters in these stories, essays, and poems raise questions common to us all: Who am I? How important is my family? How do I conduct my relationships with others? How does the outside world influence me? Quality literature may provoke more questions than answers, but they are the questions that everyone should ask. You read multicultural literature for the same reasons you read other kinds of literature: out of curiosity and because you want to see your own life reflected back at you in the stories of others. Most of all you read because you want to be transported to another world and enter- tained. Reading ethnic literature is unlikely to make you unlearn all of your prejudices. But it may help you to figure out which differences among ethnic cultures actually matter. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks said, “I believe that we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.” Finally, you should remember that ethnic or not, writers are individuals practicing a very personal art. You can’t assume that what they write is characteristic of others who share their racial or ethnic identity. As the noted poet Elizabeth Alexander wrote in one of her poems: “I didn’t want to write a poem that said ‘blackness / is,’ because we know better than anyone / that we are not one or ten or ten thousand things.” Just like you know better than anyone else that you are not one or ten or even ten thousand things. Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲ Concept Vocabulary You will find the following terms and definitions useful as you read and discuss the selections in this book. Each word is defined and then used in a sentence. assimilation the process of fitting in to a new culture or becoming like others in that culture Learning a language and social customs is important to assimilation. bigotry prejudice; intolerance Assuming that people from a certain race have little to offer is bigotry. bilingual speaking two languages fluently It was clear to the other students that Miguel was bilingual after he delivered his speech perfectly in both English and Spanish. civil rights the freedoms and rights a person may have as a member of a community, state, or nation. Civil Rights, when capitalized, refers specifically to African Americans’ struggle for freedom and fair treatment in the 1960s. “It’s my civil right!” Bill protested, insisting that he be allowed to make a phone call from the precinct. culture a characteristic set of beliefs and practices of a racial, regional, religious or other social group In the Vietnamese culture, members of an extended family often live together under one roof. desegregation the act of breaking down the barriers that separate ethnic groups In order to achieve desegregation, some school districts transport students by bus from the schools in their own neighborhoods to more distant schools. diaspora the migration and dispersion of people from their homeland In the 1930s, there was a massive diaspora of southern black Americans to the North as they sought to escape racism and find jobs in northern factories. discrimination a biased attitude or act of prejudice against a group Barring members of a certain race or religion from a club or organization is an act of discrimination. diversity variety; differences. In the study of human culture, diversity refers to the differences among individuals and groups of people in society as a whole. The racial diversity of the yearbook staff mirrored that of the school population. 9 Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler T HEME T HREE Defining Moments Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler I could wake up in the morning without a warning and my world could change: blink your eyes. “Blink Your Eyes” –Sekou Sundiata Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader/Collection Two—Student Edition sampler ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲ Blink Your Eyes (Remembering Sterling A. Brown)1 Sekou Sundiata I was on my.

SCARS AMERICAN POETRY IN THE FACE OF VIOLENCE EDITED BY CYNTHIA DUBIN EDELBERG THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS TUSCALOOSA AND LONDON CONTENTS PREFACE xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiv I. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ALBERT GOLDBARTH Of Ontology 2 HARVEY SHAPIRO How Many Times 3 JANICE MIRIKITANI Autumn Comes 4 BRUCE WEIGL For the Wife Beater's Wife .. 5 JANICE MIRIKITANI Healthy Choices 6 RACHEL BLAU DUPLESSIS Medusa 8 JANICE MIRIKITANI Without Tongue 13 AMYCLAMPITT Meridian 14 ROBERT WRIGLEY The Creche 15 MAXINE KUMIN Leisure 16 Self-fulfilling Prophecy 16 ALICIA OSTRIKER The Boys, The Broomhandle, The Retarded Girl 17 SHARON OLDS Leaving the Island 18 VII GERALD STERN The Bull Roarer 19 MARK RUDMAN from Bottles 22 RITA DOVE Taking in Wash 24 ALICIA OSTRIKER The Leaf Pile 25 TOI DERRICOTTE Poem for My Father 27 DIANE WAKOSKI Wind Secrets 29 TOI DERRICOTTE My Father Still Sleeping After Surgery 30 PAMALA KAROL [LA LOCA] Crib Death 31 from The Mayan 34 TOI DERRICOTTE Abuse 38 CHARLES WRIGHT What I remember is fire, orange fire from Bloodlines 39 ELIZABETH McKIM Taking the Name 40 BRUCE WEIGL The Impossible 41 The Man Who Made Me Love Him 41 II. VIOLENCE AND RACE JAMES WELCH The Man From Washington 44 from Blackfeet, Blood and Piegan Hunters 44 Plea To Those Who Matter 44 VIII ADRIAN C. LOUIS Sunset at Pine Ridge Agency 45 Fullblood Girl on a Blue "Horse 46 Pabst Blue Ribbon at Wounded Knee 48 JOY HARJO For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash 49 LESLIE MARMON SILKO The Fourth World 50 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA New Amsterdam 59 HENRY JOHNSON The Middle Passage 60 RITA DOVE Someone's Blood 62 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA Modern Medea 63 History Lessons 63 MICHAEL WARR We Are All The Black Boy 65 Cabrini Gulag 65 WILLIAM LOGAN Seductions of the Swimming Club 66 ETHERIDGE KNIGHT A Fable 67 HAKI R.

ETHICAL ENGAGEMENT: CRITICAL STRATEGIES FOR APPROACHING AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC FICTION BY Sandra Cox Copyright 2011 Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. Marta Caminero-Santangelo, Chairperson Dr. Doreen Fowler Dr. Stephanie Fitzgerald Dr. Giselle Anatol Dr. Ann Schofield Date Accepted April 18, 2011 ii The Dissertation Committee for Sandra Cox certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ETHICAL ENGAGEMENT: CRITICAL STRATEGIES FOR APPROACHING AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC FICTION Committee: Dr. Marta Caminero-Santangelo, Chairperson Dr. Doreen Fowler Dr. Stephanie Fitzgerald Dr. Giselle Anatol Dr. Ann Schofield Date Accepted April 18, 2011 iii Dissertation Abstract: Critics of American literature need ways to ethically interpret ethnic difference, particularly in analyses of texts that memorialize collective experiences wherein that difference is a justification for large-scale atrocity. By examining fictionalized autoethnographies—narratives wherein the author writes to represent his or her own ethnic group as a collective identity in crisis—this dissertation interrogates audiences‘ responses and authors‘ impetus for reading and producing novels that testify to experiences of cultural trauma. The first chapter synthesizes some critical strategies specific to autoethnographic fiction; the final three chapters posit a series of textual applications of those strategies. Each textual application demonstrates that outsider readers and critics can treat testimonial literatures with respect and compassion while still analyzing them critically. In the second chapter, an explication of the representations of African American women‘s experiences with the cultural trauma of slavery is brought to bear upon analyses of Toni Morrison‘s A Mercy (2009) and Alice Walker‘s Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2003).

Titles from Open Response Questions* Updated from an original list by Norma J. Wilkerson. Works referred to on the AP Literature exams since 1971 (specific years in parentheses) Please note that only authors were recommended in early years, not specific titles.. A Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (76, 00, 10, 12) Adam Bede by George Eliot (06) The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (13) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (80, 82, 85, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 05, 06, 07, 08, 11, 13) The Aeneid by Virgil (06) Agnes of God by John Pielmeier (00) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (97, 02, 03, 08, 12, 14) Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (00, 04, 08) All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (00, 02, 04, 07, 08, 09, 11) All My Sons by Arthur Miller (85, 90) All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (95, 96, 06, 07, 08, 10, 11, 13) America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan (95) An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (81, 82, 95, 03) American Pastoral by Philip Roth (09) The American by Henry James (05, 07, 10) Angels in America by Tony Kushner (09) Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (10) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (80, 91, 99, 03, 04, 06, 08, 09, 16) Another Country by James Baldwin (95, 10, 12) Antigone by Sophocles (79, 80, 90, 94, 99, 03, 05, 09, 11, 14) Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (80, 91) Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (94) Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer (76) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (78, 89, 90, 94, 01, 04, 06, 07, 09) As You Like It by William Shakespeare (92 05, 06, 10, 16) Atonement by Ian McEwan (07, 11, 13, 16) Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson (02, 05) The Awakening by Kate Chopin (87, 88, 91, 92, 95, 97, 99, 02, 04, 07, 09, 11, 14) B “The Bear” by William Faulkner (94, 06) Beloved by Toni Morrison (90, 99, 01, 03, 05, 07, 09, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16) A Bend in the River by V.

Kobe University Repository : Kernel タイトル An Analysis of Racial Solidarity in Lawson Inada’s Jazz Poetry Title 著者 Yoshioka, Yuka Author(s) 掲載誌・巻号・ページ 21世紀倫理創成研究,5:72-86 Citation 刊行日 2012-03 Issue date 資源タイプ Departmental Bulletin Paper / 紀要論文 Resource Type 版区分 publisher Resource Version 権利 Rights DOI JaLCDOI 10.24546/81003893 URL http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_kernel/81003893 PDF issue: 2021-10-02 An Analysis of Racial Solidarity in Lawson Inada’s Jazz Poetry Yuka Yoshioka Introduction In this paper, I will discuss Asian American poetry reading with music. My goal in this paper is to solve a question: how did Asian American poets articulate their ethnicity through their poetry reading? Japanese American poets Lawson Fusao Inada (1938-) creates jazz poetry, which are devoted to the theme of his experience of Japanese American internment. Therefore, I will describe the historical racial issue in America through an examination of Lawson Fusao Inada’s poetry reading about a concentration camp, with an emphasis on the racial solidarity evoked by jazz music. Investigating jazz, which is created by non-African minorities, may lead to solving the complexity of multiculturalism in America. I. Lawson Fusao Inada and his Works Lawson Fusao Inada, a third-generation (sansei) Japanese American, was born on May 26, 1938 in Fresno, California. Inada’s family was living in the west side of Fresno which had a “racially mixed working-class community.”(Huang, 145) The place Inada and his family lived is divided by a railway from the white in the east and the minorities in the west.

LOCATING the IDEAL HOMELAND TN the LITERATURE of EDWIDGE DANTICAT by JULIANE OKOT BITEK B.F.A., the University of British Columb

LOCATING THE IDEAL HOMELAND TN THE LITERATURE OF EDWIDGE DANTICAT by JULIANE OKOT BITEK B.F.A., The University of British Columbia, 1995 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULIFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May2009 © Juliane Okot Bitek, 2009 ABSTRACT Edwidge Danticat, who has lived most of her life in the United States, retains a strong link with Haiti and primarily writes about the Haitian experience inside and outside the country. For Danticat, the ‘ideal homeland’ is a psychic space where she can be Haitian, American, and belong to both countries. Danticat’s aspiration and position as one who can make claim to both Haiti and the United States somewhat supports Stuart Hall’s notion of cultural identity as a fluid entity and an identity that is becoming and is, not one that is static and was. However, Danticat locates her ‘ideal homeland’ within the Haitian Dyaspora, as a social construct that includes all the people of the Haitian descent in the diaspora, whatever their countries of citizenship. This ideal homeland is an emotional and literary space for continued expression and creation of Haitian identity, history and culture. It is not a geographical space and as such, requires that membership in it engage through text. This paper investigates ways in which Danticat expresses the ideal homeland in her fiction and nonfiction works. I use Dionne Brand, Kamau Brathwaite, Edward Soja and Judith Lewis Herman among others, as theorists to discover this ideal homeland in order to show that Danticat, like many diasporic writers, is actively engaged in locating for themselves where they can engage in their work as they create new communities and take charge of how they tell their stories and how they identify themselves.

1 Narratives of Return: The Contemporary Caribbean Woman Writer and the Quest for Home Rachel Grace Thompson Goldsmiths College, University of London PhD English and Comparative Literature 2 I hereby declare that all of the work presented in this thesis is my own. Rachel Grace Thompson. August 2014. 3 Acknowledgements To Phill, who has been there every step of this process over the past four years. For your constancy, your support, and your hugs. For listening to me and encouraging me. And for your patience and understanding through frequent tears of frustration and despair. Thank you. To my parents, who first instilled, then encouraged and nurtured a life-long love of literature. For everything from those first bedtime stories to the weekly Saturday morning trips to Fairwater library. For lending me your library cards when I had filled up my own. For taking me to Pembroke Dock when I had spent the summer reading my way through the books in Tenby. For nurturing the bookworm in me, reading to me, and with me. For your unwavering belief in my academic potential, for pushing and challenging me. For taking so much pride in each and every one of my achievements, no matter how large or small. For everything you have taught me and for the endless opportunities you have given me. And for your continuing emotional and financial support, without which none of this would have been possible. Words will never fully express my gratitude. To mum and dad, thank you. 4 Abstract This thesis investigates how diasporic Caribbean women writers use the vehicle of the novel to effect a ‘writing back’ to the Caribbean home through what I propose to consider as a specific sub- genre of Caribbean literature: ‘narratives of return’.

New Poets of the American West -An anthology of poets from eleven Western states- Uni Gottingen 230 r to 2, ft 341 Many Voices Press Flathead Valley Community College Table of Contents Editor's Note: "In This Spirit I Gathered These Poems" by Lowell Jaeger 1 Introduction: "Many Voices, Many Wests" by Brady Harrison 7 Arizona Dick Bakken Going into Moonlight 20 Sherwin Bitsui (excerpted from: Flood Song) 21 Jefferson Carter Match Race 22 A Centaur 22 Virgil Chabre Wyoming Miners 23 David Chorlton Everyday Opera 24 Jim Harrison Blue 25 Rene Char II 25 Love 26 Larson's Holstein Bull 26 Cynthia Hogue That Wild Chance of Living (2001) 27 Will Inman The Bones that Humans Lacked 28 given names 28 mesquite mother territory 29 To Catch the Truth 29 James Jay Mars Hill 30 Hershman John Two Parts Hydrogen, One Part Oxygen 31 Jane Miller xii (excerpted from Midnights) 32 Jim Natal The Half-Life of Memory 33 Sean Nevin The Carpenter Bee 34 Wildfire Triptych 34 Losing Solomon 37 Simon J. Ortiz just phoenix 38 Michael Rattee Spring 39 II David Ray The Sleepers 40 Illegals 41 Arizona Satori 41 The White Buffalo 42 Judy Ray These Days 43 Alberto Rfos Border Lines (Lineas Fronterizas) 44 Rabbits and Fire 45 Refugio's Hair 46 Mi Biblioteca Publica (My Public Library) 47 Rebecca Seiferle Ghost Riders in the Sky 48 Apache Tears 49 Leslie Marmon Silko How to Hunt Buffalo 50 Laurel Speer Buffalo Stones 52 Candyman 52 Luci Tapahonso After Noon in Yooto 53 Miles Waggener Direction 54 Nicole Walker Canister and Turkey Vulture 55 California Kim Addonizio Yes 58 In the Evening, 59 William Archila Blinking Lights 60 Ellen Bass GateC22 61 Women Walking 62 Ode to Dr.

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND PRESENTS Edwidge Danticat Create Dangerously UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND SCHNEEBECK CONCERT HALL MARCH 31, 2015 | 8 P.M. Edwidge Danticat Edwidge Danticat has been writing since she was 9 years old. When she was very young, her parents immigrated to New York from Port-au- Prince, Haiti, leaving her behind to be raised by family, until she joined them in Brooklyn at the age of 12. Memories from those formative years in Haiti remain vivid to this day, and the love of Haiti and all things Haitian that Danticat developed as a child has deeply influenced her writing. After earning a bachelor’s degree in French literature from Barnard College, Danticat pursued a Master of Fine Arts degree at Brown University, where, as her thesis, she wrote her first novel,Breath, Eyes, Memory, telling the story of four generations of Haitian women who overcome poverty and powerlessness. Danticat published her second book, Krik? Krak! at the age of 26, and became the youngest finalist ever for the National Book Award. The collection of short stories paints portraits of Haiti and Haitian Americans before democracy came to that nation. In an interview with NPR, she explained that the book was an effort “to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up … poor people, who had extraordinary dreams, but also very amazing obstacles.” The title for the collection comes from the Haitian tradition of a storyteller calling out for an audience (“Krik?”), and willing listeners gathering around and answering (“Krak!”). A natural storyteller, Danticat has written numerous books and essays, and edited multiple anthologies.

“PLACING IDENTITY: JOURNEYS TO SELF THROUGH COMMUNAL AUTONOMY IN AFRICAN DIASPORIC WOMEN’S LITERATURE” by LAUREN RENEE CHAMBERS (Under the Direction of Barbara McCaskill) ABSTRACT The construction of identity formation is informed by the myriad places women inhabit, experience, and transgress. Place provides a lens into specific categories of women’s experiences, primarily one’s relation to community. My concept of “communal autonomy” refers to how individuals develop a sense of self and interact within larger communities. My study traces how female characters in Postcolonial and western African diasporic works use place to negotiate conflicting gender expectations as they mature into womanhood in communities and nations that silence their existence. I begin with a discussion of place as community in the autobiography Call Me Woman (1985) by South African author Ellen Kuzwayo, followed by a chapter on Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) that explores specific home places in the novel as sources of knowledge Sophie uses to fashion her identity. I then turn to the novel Paradise (1997) by Toni Morrison, to explore the configuration of women as outsiders who function as a community mitigated by place. Finally, I examine a representative twenty- first century voice of African diasporic literature offered by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) presents communities as versions of extended family the protagonist Kambili uses to construct identity. Place calls into question specific institutions and thereby spaces women inhabit in seeking knowledge to define the self. Social institutions such as the home, family, and nation constitute communities through the gendered expectations and behaviors reinforced within these spaces.

BEFORE COLUMBUS FOUNDATION PRESENTS THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS 2004 America was intended to be a place where freedom from discrimination was the means by which equality was achieved. Today, American culture THE is the most diverse ever on the face of this earth. Recognizing literary excel- lence demands a panoramic perspective. A narrow view strictly to the mainstream ignores all the tributaries that feed it. American literature is AMERICAN not one tradition but all traditions. From those who have been here for thousands of years to the most recent immigrants, we are all contributing to American culture. We are all being translated into a new language. BOOK Everyone should know by now that Columbus did not “discover” America. Rather, we are all still discovering America—and we must continue to do AWARDS so. The Before Columbus Foundation was founded in 1976 as a nonprofit educational and service organization dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature. The goals of BCF are to provide recognition and a wider audience for the wealth of cultural and ethnic diversity that constitutes American writing. BCF has always employed the term “multicultural” not as a description of an aspect of American literature, but as a definition of all American litera- ture. BCF believes that the ingredients of America’s so-called “melting pot” are not only distinct, but integral to the unique constitution of American Culture—the whole comprises the parts. In 1978, the Board of Directors of BCF (authors, editors, and publishers representing the multicultural diversity of American Literature) decided that one of its programs should be a book award that would, for the first time, respect and honor excellence in American literature without restric- tion or bias with regard to race, sex, creed, cultural origin, size of press or ad budget, or even genre.

More Critical Survey of Poetry: Topical Essays English and American Poetry in the Twentieth Century by Thomas C. Foster Introduction Twentieth century poetry has been variously characterized as romantic, antiromantic, impersonal, highly personal, chaotic, orderly, classical, TABLE OF symbolist, wholly untraditional, reasoned and measured, or incomprehensible CONTENTS Introduction —depending on the critic whom one reads. This radical diversity suggests a The rise of modernism fundamental problem with poetry in the twentieth century: It has no clear path The end of Victorianism to follow. Finding previous poetry inadequate to deal with the situation in which Cultural breakdown they find themselves, modern poets must create anew, must, in Wallace Decadence Stevens’s phrase, “find out what will suffice.” The modern poem is an act of Early modern movements exploration. In the absence of givens, it must carve out its own niche, make its Imagism own raison d’être. Symbolism William Carlos Williams The Metaphysical influence Walt Whitman and Thomas Hardy After World War II Surrealism Renewed Romanticism Eastern, mythic, and archetypal influences Moral ambivalence New Criticism Disjuncture and discontinuity The poem sequence The Bridge Paterson The Maximus Poems Personal sequences English and Irish poem sequences Crow Mercian Hymns The Triumph of Love North Renga Confessional poetry Beat and Movement poetry Whither? Language poets Martian poets Wit and humor Voices of diversity Irish poetry Women’s poetry Postcolonial poets Bibliography Not surprisingly, then, twentieth century poetry is marked by astonishing variety. What logic could successfully yoke together Robert Frost and Allen Ginsberg, Philip Larkin and William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath and Ezra Pound? None, so long as the category of modern poetry is understood to be a fixed entity; such definitions always aim at closure and exclusion.

AP Literature and Composition Summer Reading List 2020-2021 Drama Ayad Akhtar, The Who & The What Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Yasmina Reza, God of Carnage John Leguizamo, Latin History for Morons Peter Shaffer, Equus Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? William Shakespeare, King Lear Anton Chekhov, Three Sisters William Shakespeare, Henry V Kristoffer Diaz, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity Sophocles, Antigone T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral Sophocles, Oedipus Rex David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie Tony Kushner, Angels in America August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night George C. Wolfe, The Colored Museum Literature Chimamanda Adichie , Americanah Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles Chimamanda Adichie , Half of a Yellow Sun Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me Ultima James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey James Joyce, Ulysses Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice Joy Kogawa, Obasan James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera Kate Chopin, The Awakening Herman Melville, Billy Budd Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek Herman Melville, Moby Dick Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Toni Morrison, Sula Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country Charles Dickens, Bleak House Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony Charles Dickens, Great Expectations Upton Sinclair, The Jungle Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss Virginia Woolf, Mrs.