Literatures and Cultures of the United States: Recommended Core Texts
The abbreviation NAAL in the following list refers to:
Baym, Nina, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. 5 vols. New
York: Norton, 2003.
Colonial Period, ca. 1600 - 1760s
Christopher Columbus, "Letters" (as in NAAL)
Thomas Harriot, Brief and True Report of the New Found Land Virginia (as in in NAAL)
John Smith, Description of New England (as in NAAL)
John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity"
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (as in NAAL)
Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
Sarah Kemble Knight, The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York
Colonial Poetry
Anne Bradstreet, "Before the Birth of One of Her Children," "Upon the Burning of Our House
July 10th, 1666," "The Author to Her Book," "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
Edward Taylor, "Meditation 38 (First Series)"
Revolutionary and Early Republican Period, ca. 1760s - 1820s
Benjamin Franklin, "The Way to Wealth" und The Autobiography (as in NAAL)
Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”
Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
Constitution of the United States
Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, "Letter III: What is an American?"
"Federalist No. 10"
Thomas Jefferson, "Query XIX" from Notes on the State of Virginia (as in in NAAL)
James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans
Samson Occum, "A Sermon Preached by Samson Occom"
Poetry
Phillis Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
Philip Freneau, "The Indian Burying Ground," "The Wild Honey Suckle"
Romantic Period and American Renaissance, ca. 1820s - 1860s
Essays / Speeches
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature," "The American Scholar," "Self-Reliance"
Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address"
Narrative Prose
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, "Young Goodman Brown"
Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," Walden
Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The
Raven"
Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
Poetry
William Cullen Bryant, "The Prairies"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life"
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"
Walt Whitman, "Preface to Leaves of Grass," "Song of Myself," "When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom’d"
Emily Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz – when I died," "Because I could not stop for Death,"
"The Soul selects her own Society," "My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun," "I taste a liquor
never brewed"
American Realism and Naturalism, ca. 1860s - 1910s
Narrative Prose
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Kate Chopin, The Awakening, "The Storm" and "At the 'Cadian Ball" (together)
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes, The Rise of Silas Lapham, "Criticism and
Fiction" (Essay)
Frank Norris, The Octopus, The Pit
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron"
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "A New England Nun"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, "Daisy Miller," "The Art of Fiction" (Essay)
Ambrose Bierce, "Chickamauga," “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
Bret Harte, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"
Hamlin Garland, "Under the Lion’s Paw"
Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat," "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets," The Red Badge of Courage
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Jack London, "To Build a Fire," "The Law of Life"
Modernism, ca. 1910s - 1950s
Narrative Prose
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, "Babylon Revisited"
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, "A Rose for Emily"
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, "Sweat"
Anzia Yezierska, "The Lost 'Beautifulness'"
Eudora Welty, "A Worn Path"
John Dos Passos, U.S.A.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Richard Right, Native Son
Drama
Angelina Weld Grimké, Rachel
Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Elmar Rice, The Adding Machine
Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty
Lillian Hellman, The Children's Hour
Thornton Wilder, Our Town
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire
Arthur Miller, Death of A Salesman, All My Sons
Poetry
T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro," "A Pact"
H.D., "Oread," "Helen"
William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow," "Spring and All"
Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Walls"
Marianne Moore, "Poetry"
e.e. cummings, "“next to of course god america i"
Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West"
Claude McKay, "If We Must Die," "Harlem Dancer," "If We Must Die"
Langston Hughes, Don’t You Want Be Free?, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
Countee Cullen, "From the Dark Tower"
Postmodernism and beyond (incl. Multiculturalism and Neorealism), ca. 1950s - present
Narrative Prose
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Bernard Malamud, The Assistant
James Badwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Art Spiegelman, Maus
Toni Morrison, Beloved
T.C. Boyle, Tortilla Curtain
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Philip Roth, The Human Stain
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredible Close
John Barth, "Lost in the Funhouse"
John Updike, "Separating"
John Cheever, "The Swimmer"
Donald Barthelme, "A Manual for Sons"
Hisaye Yamamoto, "Seventeen Syllables"
Sandra Cisneros, "Mericans"
Toni Morrison, “Recitatif”
Drama
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The American Dream
Arthur Kopit, Indians
Sam Shepard, True West
Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide
August Wilson, The Piano Lesson
David Mamet, Oleanna
Poetry
Allen Ginsberg, "America"
Gary Snyder, "Riprap"
Charles Olson, "Maximus, To Himself"
Elizabeth Bishop, "The Man-Moth"
Robert Lowell, "For the Union Dead"
Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
Anne Sexton, "Her Kind"
Adrienne Rich, "Power"
Denise Levertov, "A Woman Alone"
Audre Lorde, "Chain"
Rita Dove, "Arrow"
Joy Harjo, "Remember"
Linda Hogan, "The Truth Is"