Thursday & Friday; April 23 & 24

We corrected page 10 of the grammar packet.

The final Act of "Raisin in the Sun" was finished today. We watched most of it, but we have about twenty minutes left in most classes.

If you are failing the class, you are given an informal detention next Wednesday after school in the computer area of the library. I will be there to help you finish your project. Don't wait until then to get started. Maybe you can get it done before then and not have to attend. If you don't attend and don't have it turned in, you will be given a referral.

April 21 & 22; Tuesday & Wednesday

Assigned as homework the grammar packet page 10. Make sure you have it complete before you come to class. It might be graded for completion.

We read Act 2, scene 3 of "Raisin in the Sun." Then we watched it.

You need to start bringing your choice reading with you everyday.

You have about two more class days to memorize and recite one stanza of "O Captain." It is a fifty point assignment. Recite it to me privately or in front of class. During April, any extra lines learned will be two bonus points per line.

You may still recite the poem in May. The fifty point assignment is still the same. During May the bonus points for extra lines will be one per line, instead of the two.

If you don't have the Multi-genre essay done from last month, you will be given detention with me in the library computer area next Wednesday from 3:10 to 4:30. If you get your work in before then, no need to come. If you don't come and you should have attended, you will get a referral.

April 17 & 20; Friday & Monday

We read and watched "Raisin in the Sun" Act 2, scene 2.

We reviewed the memorization assignment, which has a first due date of anytime in April. That is about four classes. One stanza is mandatory. More can earn bonus points. Look at the original blog entry early in April.

Students should be reading their choice books. Those directions were also given in an earlier blog.



"Online Forecasting, April 15-April 26

Turn your forecasting sheet into Counseling."



"Don't forget to forecast online. The deadline for online forecasting is this Sunday, April 26. Counselors are available to answer questions during lunch and before and after school. Consult with your math teacher regarding your math placement. You can forecast online in the library if you do not have internet access at home."

Wednesday & Thursday; April 15 & 16

We are starting on Act II. It has two scenes in it.

2.1 pages 45-59 0:00- 26:58

2.2 pages 60-70 26:59 - 45:45

2.3 pages 71-86 45:10-1:10.10

3.1 pages 87-102 1:10:20-1:49:0

This video starts with act 2.

Monday & Tuesday; April 13 & 14

Reminder: you do need to learn one stanza of "O Captain" to recite to teacher or to the class before the end of April. Additional lines will be awarded two bonus points per line. Lines need to be consecutive. If you want to come back and add more lines at a different time, you will need to redo the earlier lines also. In May you can also get this done but the bonus points will be only one point per extra line.

Students have not had their page 9 from grammar packet done so we did not correct it today. It will be moved to the next class.

We read and watched "Raisin in the Sun" 1.2. If you missed any of the first two scenes, yesterday's blog has the entire first two scenes from youtube. That is a total of one hour and three minutes.

Continue to look for strands of poverty, prejudice, sexism, heritage, and religion that run through this play.

If you have not chosen your book for choice reading, do so soon. The assignment is listed one or two posts back.

Grade sheets were handed out today.
It shows what grade will be on your progress report for third quarter. Remember that third quarter is not a transcripted grade.

Wednesday & Thursday; April 8 & 9

Continue to work on your choice reading. See the handouts from class. Due dates and information regarding that assignment:

We are working on three things for the next two months: 1) "Raisin in the Sun", 2) American Poetry, and 3)

Choice reading.
If you want to earn an A on this, follow the directions given in class, have reading with you each day, and read
A = 450 pages or more,
B = 350 pages or more,
C = 250 pages or more,
D = 150 pages or more.

Once you reach this mark, you are still required to have choice reading novels in class. See class handout for further instructions.

Deadline date Seniors, Thursday, May 28.
Deadline for Juniors, Friday, June 5.
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Do grammar packet page number 11 for next class.

Remember that April assignment is to recite at least one stanza of "O Captain, My Captain." There are up to 24 extra credit points along with the 50 required points. In May, the extra points will go to 12 extra credit possible. Google the poem, or look back in the blog. You will see a video of a young lady singing it. That is a good way to learn the poem.

Between last class and today, we covered all of Act 1, scene 1.  From this point on, we will use the designation  of  1.1 Raisin in the Sun.  Below is the movie. I have added how far the scenes go. I will add the later scenes as we get to them.

1.1    pages 3-26   movie clip from start to 35:50

1.2    pages 27-43  movie clip, stops at 1:03.53

This is where this youtube video ends, at the end of Act I.





A twenty minute video about the author Lorraine Hansberry is here for your use. There will be questions on our test about what is said in this video.

Monday & Tuesday; April 6 & 7

We corrected the grammar packets 7 & 8. If you noticed, we skipped number 6.

We filled out character profiles for "Raisin in the Sun." We used Character tea party method of learning these. I am posting those character sketches here:
blank character list

Brief description of each character

"Raisin in the Sun" character map.

When baseball season starts, my class always enjoys Abbot and Costello's "Who's on first?"
Watch it here:

Thursday & Friday; April 2 & 3

Basically, there are three things that we will be doing for the remainder of the quarter:

Raisin in the Sun

Choice reading.

American Poetry





Raisin in the Sun: we will start next week.

Choice reading: See previous post.


American Poetry:
I handed out a copy of "O Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman.
We will be talking about this poem in one of the next classes. I am assigning that you learn one stanza of the poem and recite it to me by the end of April. For every extra line, you will receive two points. That is a possible 24 extra credit points. The recitation could be done in class or outside class. If you don't do it until May, the extra credit points will drop to one point per extra line. It is understood that all of the lines will be done together. IF you want to add to your total, you will need to recite from the beginning.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.


O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.


My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.


To aid you in learning it, watch and listen to this student version:


Raisin in the Sun: we will start next week.

Choice reading: See previous post.

Tuesday & Wednesday: March 31 & April 1 Book Reviews

We are working on three things for the next two months: 1) "Raisin in the Sun", 2) American Poetry, and 3) Choice reading.
If you want to earn an A on this, follow the directions given in class, have reading with you each day, and read
A = 450 pages or more,
B = 350 pages or more,
C = 250 pages or more,
D = 150 pages or more.

Once you reach this mark, you are still required to have choice reading novels in class. See class handout for further instructions.

Deadline date Seniors, Thursday, May 28.
Deadline for Juniors, Friday, June 5.


Link to annotated list of American Lit choice reading selections.


Or if you want to just read off this blog, this is the file the above link would take you:

Sorry about the order of this.


1 The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
Review: “The book is beautifully written. Steinbeck's style flows so smoothly and is so accessible. The book follows the Joad family for about nine months as they are driven from the place they've called home for generations and travel to California, only to find out that it is not the land of opportunity they expected.”
Summary: First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America

2 The Joy Luck Club- Amy Tan
Review: “Amy Tan writes about four mothers struggling through the hard times in life in order to live a better one in the future. The Joy Luck Club formed by four women in China allowed them to share their stories and forget their worries. These four mothers hoped that raising their daughters in America and raising them the American way will give them a more successful life. They hoped that their daughters will learn to take better steps in life, than to take the wrong ones that their mothers have taken in the past. But the relationship between a mother and a daughter is so deep that they learn that a piece of their mother's personality traits will always be with them. And no matter how Americanized a child may be raised, she will still see a Chinese part of herself inside”
Summary: Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

3 Pudd’nhead Wilson- Mark Twain
Review: “I was very surprised how quickly I was drawn into this story. I had never heard of this book and it is now my favorite Twain. This story deals with children that were switched at birth; one a black slave and the other a well to do white. The characters are vivid and lively”
Summary: Switched at birth by a young slave woman attempting to protect her son from the horrors of slavery, a light-skinned infant changes places with the master's white son. This simple premise is the basis of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a compelling drama that contains all the elements of a classic 19th-century mystery: reversed identities, a ghastly crime, an eccentric detective, and a tense courtroom scene.

4 Into the Beautiful North- Luis Urrea
Review: In this tale of four friends, one notorious and ugly fence, and two cultures, Luis Urrea puts his tremendous storytelling powers, years of experience, and imagination (always sympathetic) to use to create an unforgettable novel. I fell immediately in love with the characters, the dialogue (a great combination of Spanish, English, Hollywood, and street jargon mixed with references to pop fiction, movies, and music), and the scenery
Summary: Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US when she was young. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village--they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own "Siete Magníficos"--to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

5 Flight Summary
The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years, a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager — a boy who is not a “legal” Indian because he was never claimed by his father — who learns the true meaning of terror. About to commit a devastating act, the young man finds himself shot back through time on a shocking sojourn through moments of violence in American history. He resurfaces in the form of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, inhabits the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Big Horn, and then rides with an Indian tracker in the 19th Century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own contemporary body, he is mightily transformed by all he’s seen. This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant — making us laugh while breaking our hearts. Simultaneously wrenching and deeply humorous, wholly contemporary yet steeped in American history, Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and again, groundbreaking Alexie.
Review: Sherman Alexie reaches out to every adolescent who has ever felt isolated, alone, or embarrassed about themselves. The protagonist, Michael (or "Zits") embodies the very essence of adolescent behavior: he lashes out against authority; he seeks acceptance and friendship from a boy that shares similar beliefs; he speaks in a tone and voice that is a perfect replica of most teens today; and, Zits searches for his identity at a point in his life which mirrors when most teens are uncertain of who they are. Each of these important life experiences offer the reader a chance to connect to this dynamic character.
The language that Sherman Alexie uses really is sophisticated, relatable and engaging. Zits uses foul language to protect himself. Basically, the language Zits uses serves as a defense mechanism, and in turn, shows his reluctance to open his heart. Zits usually reacts with statements like, "You bet your plopping a** I'm laughing at you," (15) when he wants to avoid conversations or agitate someone. This is by no means the crudest of his language usage, but for this review, I chose to keep it as clean as possible. Check it out to see what other hostile comeback responses Zits responds with.

6 How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Summary
In this debut novel, the García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow a tyrannical dictator is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wild and wondrous and not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways, but the girls try find new lives: by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents sets the sisters free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home—and not at home—in America.
Review This book will appeal to people of all ages. While some of the men in my book club didn't find the subject matter interesting, I think most women will enjoy the book. It tells stories of their childhood in the Caribbean, and then growing up to adulthood in the U.S. Readers of Amy Tan will enjoy this book, with similar themes but with a Hispanic touch.
Thoroughly enjoyable, I did not have to struggle through any part of the book. It is also an easy and quick read.

7. Tortilla Curtain Summary
Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican illegals Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.
Review Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain differs from other books of his that I have read in that it tackles a serious set of social issues head on. Among the other reviews posted here for this book I see that some have claimed that the book is 'unrealistic' and makes use of every stereotype imaginable. Well, while one wouldn't want to pretend that all Southern Californians of means are shallow conspicuous consumers, nothing in the portrait Boyle creates here rings untrue. There must be thousands of people who fit this image. That being the case, it is important to make the point that he doesn't present either the Yuppie Californian family or the Mexican immigrant family as a symbol. They are real people. They don't stand for anything else. And while the extreme dichotomy posed between the wealth and well being of the one and the poverty and marginal health of the other do serve the purpose of highlighting the issue of the extreme inequities in the distribution of goods and services in this country, Boyle does not suggest a solution. Rather, he is interested in showing us what happens when these extremes come into contact in unexpected circumstances. What he has given us is a story of people in different circumstances responding as they likely would - as their training and experience have prepared them to.
I enjoyed the book very much. Apart from Boyle's considerable skill with words, his characters were vivid and the plot - though heavy on coincidence (hey, it worked for Dickens) - is interesting and keeps the reader focused till the end.

8. My Antonia Summary
My Ántonia evokes the Nebraska prairie life of Willa Cather's childhood, and commemorates the spirit and courage of immigrant pioneers in America. One of Cather's earliest novels, written in 1918, it is the story of Ántonia Shimerda, who arrives on the Nebraska frontier as part of a family of Bohemian emigrants. Her story is told through the eyes of Jim Burden, a neighbor who will befriend Ántonia, teach her English, and follow the remarkable story of her life.
Working in the fields of waving grass and tall corn that dot the Great Plains, Ántonia forges the durable spirit that will carry her through the challenges she faces when she moves to the city. But only when she returns to the prairie does she recover her strength and regain a sense of purpose in life. In the quiet, probing depth of Willa Cather's art, Ántonia's story becomes a mobbing elegy to those whose persistence and strength helped build the American frontier.
Review Will Cather's, My Antonia, was a very different immigrant story. We all know that people migrate from their home town to supposedly a better place. In her book Cather writes of a family coming from Bohemia to Nebraska. This family is given the impression that Nebraska is a better place to live in, where there is more freedom and much to eat. This is not true in this story or any other real life story of immigrants. This family, as others, suffers the changes of being in a different and strange place. Cather explains in detail their sufferings, their losses and their victories.
Cathers descriptions of the country life are breathtaking. She tells how the immigrant settlers adventurously farm the prairie lands. She tells how this family is ignorant and how they bloom with their struggles. And she tells of their isolation from culture.
Will Cather's great storytelling style is characterized by an ingenious pragmatism and avoidance of sentimentality. My Antonia is considered to be the author's masterpiece. I agree because it is an excellent story about a pioneer woman who has earned a distinguished place in American fiction. On my scale, My Antonia, by Will Cather, is a perfect 10 because it is superb writing about a strong willed, courageous woman.

9. God Bless You, Mr Rosewater summary
Eliot Rosewater, drunk, volunteer fireman, and President of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is the hero of this darkly-humored comic masterpiece. In the stingingly irreverent story of a man filled with total love for humanity and tormented by a maddeningly sane vision of society, the author has created a wild, brilliant, etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, waste and folly of modern man. Once again Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has written a novel that stands head, heart and funnybone above all others on the scene today. (from back cover)
Reviews Interesting concept, with some wry and humorous moments sprinkled along the way.
It's not boring, and the author's skill with language keeps one engaged. One can't fault his writing skills and his fame is not achieved by chance.
But in the long run I was left with an underwhelming impression of "so what."
Wonderful. Book loved it
Full it wit and humor. A joy to read. You can finish it in a day and call it a day well spent.
10. The Color Purple summary
The Color Purple is the story of two sisters—one a missionary to Africa and the other a child wife living in the South—who remain loyal to one another across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.
Reviews
"Intense emotional impact . . . Indelibly affecting . . . Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer."—The New York Times Book Review
"Superb . . . A work to stand beside literature of any time and place."—San Francisco Chronicle
"The Color Purple is an American novel of permanent importance."—Newsweek
"Marvelous characters . . . A story of revelation . . . One of the great books of our time."--Essence

11. Native Son summary
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright’s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
Reviews
A compelling read from start to finish, this book tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in the Chicago ghetto during the 1930s. Bigger Thomas is an archtype for the experience of black youths, the black struggle in America. I have read "Sonny's Blues," "Invisible Man," but I have found this novel the most powerful of the three.

This is also a great read for the would-be fiction writer. It's all here: plot, character, setting and gripping story telling that holds you to the end.
A must read.
Brilliantly composed novel of African-Americans and the struggle of oppression, fear, and racism in the 1930's. They were faced with poverty, hate, and discrimination daily. They lived completely segregated from the wealthy white people and you will be surprised to learn of the conditions they are faced with. This book keeps you on the edge of your seat and is extremely educational. IT IS A MUST READ!!!!!

12. You Can’t Take It With You
The stenographer Alice Sycamore is in love with her boss Tony Kirby, who is the vice-president of the powerful company owned by his greedy father Anthony P. Kirby. Kirby Sr. is dealing a monopoly in the trade of weapons, and needs to buy one last house in a twelve block area owned by Alice's grandparent Martin Vanderhof. However, Martin is the patriarch of an anarchic and eccentric family where the members do not care for money but for having fun and making friends. When Tony proposes Alice, she states that it would be mandatory to introduce her simple and lunatic family to the snobbish Kirbys, and Tone decides to visit Alice with his parents one day before the scheduled. There is an inevitable clash of classes and lifestyles, the Kirbys spurn the Sycamores and Alice breaks with Tony, changing the lives of the Kirby family.It's a play that reads well. From the opening description through to the final line of dialogue it is entertainment, pure and simple. The first act is extraordinary, a mixing of exposition and farce which has rarely, if ever, been equaled. The play as a whole is human, humane, and witty, and wise. It has an almost Taoist quality and a peace at its core. It is a great play which should be seen, read, and experienced at every available opportunity. On top of all this, it makes me laugh.

13. Wiseguys summary
Nicholas Pileggi's non-fiction book, Wiseguy, is the basis for the hit movie, GoodFellas, directed by Martin Scorsese (1990). Wiseguy is the true story of Henry Hill, a member of the Lucchese organized crime family in New York. Henry's heyday takes place during the 1960s and 1970s during which time he works under prominent mob boss Paul Vario in the Brownsville-East New York section of Brooklyn. Henry is drawn to the mafia lifestyle as a young boy, taking a job at Tuddy Vario's cabstand at the age of eleven. The impressionable boy is introduced to the wealth and power that is granted the men in the Varios' employ. As these men are criminals by nature, they have no qualms about luring young Henry into the life. Henry is industrious, clever, and willing to hustle to run whatever errands the men need. He quickly earns the approval of his elders, who allow him to drive their cars and drink their booze, making Henry feel like an adult. Henry feels accepted and approved of for the first time in his life. He neglects his schooling, and when the truant officer sends a letter to his parents, the Varios respond by threatening Henry's mailman to ensure Henry never receives another such letter.

14. Lost in Place summary
As a young teenager in suburban Connecticut, Mark Salzman (Iron and Silk, the Soloist) becomes obsessed with Kung Fu. He dreams of wandering the world as an enlightened martial arts master, even setting up a makeshift Buddhist altar in his family's basement and buying a mail-order "bald head wig" to make him look more like a zen monk. Mark begins to study Kung Fu with Sensei O'Keefe, a frequently drunk young white man with anger management issues. Although he is the smallest person in the class and is terrified of physical violence, Mark perseveres, earns his first belts, and makes some close friends, but eventually realizes that Sensei O'Keefe has no grasp of the philosophy that draw Mark to Kung Fu in the first place. He quits the class and moves through a series of other obsessions, including jazz cello and marijuana. Throughout these years, Mark is guided by his optimistic music teacher mother and his extremely pessimistic amateur astronomer father. At the end of the memoir, Mark has begun college at Yale, where he returns to his first great love and decides to major in Chinese literature.
15. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks:
In the Prologue to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot describes an old photograph of a pretty, fearless-looking young woman with light brown skin. It is a picture of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. A few months before her death, a doctor cut out a small sample of her cancer cells, which became the first and most important line of human cells ever to survive and multiply indefinitely in the laboratory environment. Her cells have helped scientists make some of the most important advances in modern medical history—but they were taken without her knowledge and without her permission.
Rebecca Skloot became interested in this story when, at the age of sixteen, she enrolled in a community college biology class to fulfill a high school science requirement. Her teacher, Donald Defler, gave a lecture about the amazing qualities of human cells. In it, he mentioned that cell reproduction was “beautiful…like a perfectly choreographed dance.” He explained that even one mistake in this dance can cause cells to reproduce uncontrollably: cancer.

16. I’m Down: Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. “He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried,” writes Wolff. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter down.
Unfortunately, Mishna didn’t quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she couldn’t dance, she couldn’t sing, she couldn’t double Dutch and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team. She was shy, uncool, and painfully white. And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too “black” to fit in with her white classmates. I’m Down is a hip, hysterical and at the same time beautiful memoir that will have you howling with laughter, recommending it to friends and questioning what it means to be black and white in America.
17. The Secret Life of Bees:
Set in South Carolina during 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a fourteen year old white girl, Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fiercehearted
“standin mother,”Rosaleen, insults three racists in town, they escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily finds refuge in their mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna.
Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the
mystery surrounding her mother. The Secret Life of Bees is a major literary triumph
about the search for love and belonging, a novel that possesses a rare wisdom about
life and the power and divinity of the female spirit.

18. Fight Club:
The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.In his debut novel, Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret boxing matches in the basement of bars. There two men fight "as long as they have to." A gloriously original work that exposes what is at the core of our modern world.

19. Into The Wild:
Outside Fairbanks, Alaska, a truck driver stops for a hitchhiker who introduces himself as Alex (though his real name is Christopher Johnson McCandless). The hitchhiker says he is from South Dakota and requests a ride to Denali National Park. He then tells the driver, an electrician named Jim Gallien, that he wants to "walk deep into the bush and 'live off the land for a few months.'"
At first Gallien thinks McCandless is "another delusional visitor to the Alaskan frontier." But during their two-hour drive north, Gallien changes his opinion and comes to regard the young man as intelligent and thoughtful. Gallien recognizes, however, that McCandless lacks the basic necessities for surviving in the Alaskan bush: he has no food except for a 10-pound bag of rice, his hiking boots are not waterproof, and his rifle is too small for the large game he will have to kill in order to survive. Other essentials that McCandless lacks include an ax, snowshoes, and a compass.Review: Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour-de-force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's storytelling blaze through every page.

20 The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman-
This is one of those works of fiction that is so realistic that the viewer can only assume that this is the story of a real American heroine, not a composite of the many unsung greats of the past. Cicely Tyson is magnificent as both the young and aged Miss Pittman. Her performance should go down as one of the best ever done for the small or the big screen. Every minute that she is in view is a major glimpse into the talent of a great actress.
The excellent script that traces the 110 years of the title character includes many of the critical points in the life of African-Americans from Reconstruction on to the Civil Rights struggle of the early 1960's. This is history that is informative as well as entertaining.
Review: As an educator by profession, I heartily recommend this film to be a staple in every media center's video library. Timeless and relevant, "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" is an undeniable masterpiece!

21. A Lesson Before Dying
So, we were all assigned our summer reading and completely hated the fact we had to actually read during summer, but to my surprise I actually enjoyed one of the books I read. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines is a heartwarming novel of how man can overcome enormous obstacles which are set against him. The story is set in the late 1940's in the small Cajun community of Bayonne, Louisiana. Racism continues to haunt this small town and all of its members.
This story is told through the eyes of a young teacher named Grant who finds himself struggling to find happiness in the small community he lives in. Early in the novel you learn that the story is going to surround a young black man named Jefferson who is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. When two men attempt to rob a local liquor store, the owner of the store and the robbers begin shooting. Jefferson is an innocent bystander to the crime, and when the smoke clears Jefferson is the only one left standing

22. Snow Falling on Cedar
Snow Falling on Cedars was an absorbing, thoroughly enjoyable read. At times an interracial romance, a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and a fictionalized chronicle of the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans, this book pulls the reader into an accurate rendering of life on an island in Puget Sound. The disparate aspects of the novel are seamlessly interwoven into a narrative that allows the reader to embrace the plot, the characters, and the dead-on descriptions of the physical characteristics of the novel's setting.
The novel is narrated by Ismael Chambers, the publisher of the only newspaper on San Piedro Island, the fictional stand-in for Bainbridge Island, Washington. The islanders are, with few exceptions, either strawberry farmers or Salmon fishermen. When a white fisherman dies under suspicious circumstances, the evidence points towards a Japanese-American fisherman who was the last person to see the dead man alive. Ishmael's boyhood romance with Hatsue, the girl that later becomes the accused man's wife, provides fertile material for interesting flashbacks to the early 1940s, when virtually all of the island's Japanese-American population was carted off to internment camps soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
I have always believed that one of the true marks of a great novelist is his/her ability to create believable characters of the opposite sex. Many well-respected writers fail at this task. In this novel, David Guterson's portrayal of Hatsue rings as true as any reader could hope for.
If you have seen the film based on the novel, please don't let its substantial shortcomings steer you away from this book, which is a must read for anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction.

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God
"There Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston, is widely acknowledged as a beloved classic of American literature. This novel is truly one of those great works that remains both entertaining and deeply moving; it is a book for classrooms, for reading groups of all types, and for individual readers.
In "There Eyes," Hurston tells the life story of Janie, an African-American woman. We accompany Janie as she experiences the very different men in her life. Hurston's great dialogue captures both the ongoing "war of the sexes," as well as the truces, joys, and tender moments of male-female relations. But equally important are Janie's relationships with other Black women. There are powerful themes of female bonding, identity, and empowerment which bring an added dimension to this book.
But what really elevates "Their Eyes" to the level of a great classic is Hurston's use of language. This is truly one of the most poetic novels in the American canon. Hurston blends the engaging vernacular speech of her African-American characters with the lovely "standard" English of her narrator, and in both modes creates lines that are just beautiful.
"Their Eyes" captures the universal experiences of pain and happiness, love and loss. And the whole story is told with both humor and compassion. If you haven't read it yet, read it; if you've already read it, read it again.

24. Reefer Madness
The authorities are concerned over rampant narcotic use overtaking the community. They are especially worried about marijuana, both because it grows wild and thus is difficult to control, but also because of its effect, which includes possible insanity leading to dangerous behavior. One of those concerned is high school principal Dr. Alfred Carroll, who doesn't like what it is doing to the students at his school. Meanwhile, Jack Perry and Mae Coleman are marijuana pushers, they who host marijuana parties on behalf of their boss. Mae prefers to push to adults whereas Jack has no problem getting teenagers hooked. Good kids and high school sweethearts Bill Harper and Mary Lane have no idea of the nature of the parties in Mae's apartment, although some in their social circle, including Mary's brother, Jimmy Lane, often frequent those parties. A series of events leads to both Bill then Mary going to Mae's apartment, which in turn results in two tragic events, both the result of marijuana use. The lives of those involved, both the guilty and the innocent, are forever altered, because of the scourge called marijuana.

25. Sacco and Vanzetti: The men, the murders…
Sacco-Vanzetti Case (săkˈō-vănzĕtˈē) [key]. On Apr. 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree, Mass., and his guard were shot and killed by two men who escaped with over $15,000. It was thought from reports of witnesses that the murderers were Italians. Because Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had gone with two other Italians to a garage to claim a car that local police had connected with the crime, they were arrested. Both men were anarchists and feared deportation by the Dept. of Justice. Both had evaded the army draft. On their arrest they made false statements; both carried firearms; neither, however, had a criminal record, nor was there any evidence of their having had any of the money. In July, 1921, they were found guilty after a trial in Dedham, Mass. and sentenced to death. Many then believed that the conviction was unwarranted and had been influenced by the reputation of the accused as radicals when antiradical sentiment was running high..

26. The Devils Highway
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, a place called the Devil's Highway. Fathers and sons, brothers and strangers, entered a desert so harsh and desolate that even the Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it. Twelve came back out.
Now, Luis Alberto Urrea tells the story of this modern odyssey. He takes us back to the small towns and unpaved cities south of the border, where the poor fall prey to dreams of a better life and the sinister promises of smugglers. We meet the men who will decide to make the crossing along the Devil's Highway and, on the other side of the border, the men who are ready to prevent them from reaching their destination. Urrea reveals exactly what happened when the twenty-six headed into the wasteland, and how they were brutally betrayed by the one man they had trusted most. And from that betrayal came the inferno, a descent into a world of cactus spines, labyrinths of sand, mountains shaped like the teeth of a shark, and a screaming sun so intense that even at midnight the temperature only drops to 97 degrees. And yet, the men would not give up. The Devil's Highway is a story of astonishing courage and strength, of an epic battle against circumstance. These twenty-six men would look the Devil in the eyes - and some of them would not blink.

27. Growing Up
Russell Baker's memoir describes his childhood in rural Virginia, his youth growing up in the Great Depression, and his young adulthood in Baltimore with his mother. Russell's reminiscences are centered on his relationship with his mother, a single parent through much of his youth, who eventually grows senile and is unable to tell him about her own life growing up.
Lucy is the daughter of a gentile Virginia lawyer who dies unexpectedly, leaving Lucy to drop out of college and take teaching jobs in rural areas. She meets Benny Baker, a son of a large local family, and gets pregnant. The two marry over objections by Benny's matriarchal mother Ida Rebecca. They have three children, Russell, Doris, and little Audrey, and Lucy fails to reform Benny from drinking. Benny is diabetic, and he dies an early death, leaving Lucy with three children. One of Benny's brothers adopts Audrey, and Lucy moves in with her brother Allen. The Great Depression begins, and Lucy can't get a job.

28. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,
is a thought-provoking, research-based account of the rise of the fast food industry and the resulting consequences of the drive for low-cost, rapidly prepared meals. Schlosser clearly demonstrates that this industry alone has been responsible for a revolution in the ways by which beef and poultry are grown, fattened, slaughtered, processed and packaged. Corporate greed and profit-driven executives have been responsible for the destruction of the meat cutters and packers union, the demise of the large urban meat-packers who employed those union workers, the destruction of formerly lovely western towns by the placement of huge feedlots and slaughterhouses with waste lagoons that pollute the air, the wholesale exploitation of poor, uneducated, non-English speaking workers, and the demise of the independent rancher who cannot compete with corporate-controlled ranches and feedlots and who is the victim of secret pricing by the four top meat processors. Further, these corporate giants, through sheer political power and lobbying, have been able to systematically dismantle any attempts to effectively police the meat processing industry, leaving the consumer vulnerable to a host of infectious diseases rampant in slaughterhouses across the country and the workers without proper health care and workmen's compensation.

29. Five Days at Memorial
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink’s landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice
In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos.
After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.
Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

30. Nickel and Dimed
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour?
To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

31. Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams
In Limbo, award-winning journalist Alfred Lubrano identifies and describes an overlooked cultural phenomenon: the internal conflict within individuals raised in blue-collar homes, now living white-collar lives. These people often find that the values of the working class are not sufficient guidance to navigate the white-collar world, where unspoken rules reflect primarily upper-class values. Torn between the world they were raised in and the life they aspire too, they hover between worlds, not quite accepted in either. Himself the son of a Brooklyn bricklayer, Lubrano informs his account with personal experience and interviews with other professionals living in limbo. For millions of Americans, these stories will serve as familiar reminders of the struggles of achieving the American Dream.

32. The Piano Lesson
Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, August Wilson's sensitive story of a family's struggle to reconcile the past with the present centers around the carved piano which dominates the living room of Doaker Charles and his niece Berniece. The legs of the piano are carved with faces of their slave ancestors, carvings made by a distant relation who was owned by the Sutter family and working on their farm in Mississippi before Emancipation. Berniece's brother Boy Willie, recently released from a prison farm and penitentiary, has come to Pittsburgh with his friend Lymon, determined to sell this ancient piano in which he claims half-ownership. His arguments with Berniece conjure up the ghost of Sutter, who calls out Boy Willie's name.

33. Clybourne Park is a play by Bruce Norris written as a spin-off to Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. It portrays fictional events set before and after the Hansberry play, and is loosely based on historical events that took place in the city of Chicago. It premiered in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play received its UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a production directed by Dominic Cooke. The play received its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a production directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Amy Morton. As described by the Washington Post, the play "applies a modern twist to the issues of race and housing and aspirations for a better life

34. Death of a Salesman is a tragedy about the differences between a New York family's dreams and the reality of their lives. The play is a scathing critique of the American Dream and of the competitive, materialistic American society of the late 1940s. The storyline features Willy Loman, an average guy who attempts to hide his averageness and failures behind delusions of grandeur as he strives to be a "success."

35. The Other Wes Moore:
summary: Two kids with the same name, liv­ing in the same city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, dec­o­rated com­bat vet­eran, White House Fel­low, and busi­ness leader. The other is serv­ing a life sen­tence in prison for felony mur­der. Here is the story of two boys and the jour­ney of a generation.
review: “This is a very well-written book, with a fascinating story to tell”
36. Locas:
Rather than simmer beneath the surface, anger boils over on the pages of this first novel. Murray perfectly captures the patois and fury of the Mexican women of the East L.A. neighborhood of Echo Park. Here, the gang hierarchy is set in stone. There are jefes, right hands, taggers, third raters and sheep, the last being the girls who shut up, pose prettily at rumblas and carry babies for the men. Narrators Lucia and Cecelia, however, do not fit this role: Lucia wants to be a grandola; Cecelia sees herself as ugly, a "dirt dark Indian" who can't hold on to a pregnancy or a girlfriend. At the outset, the gun-dealing Lobos gang prevails, led by Manny, who is Cecelia's brother and Lucia's lover. As cocaine supersedes guns and upstart rival G-4s challenge the Lobos, the two women struggle, exhibiting a depth of character that sets them apart from other women in Echo Park. In portraying Lucia's unrelenting criminal meanness and hunger for power and Cecelia's ultimate resignation to a life of praying and cleaning rich rubias' houses, Murray gives readers inner-city gang life from the eyes of women. Both narrators' voices are insistent, unvarnished, in-your-face tough.

37. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:
An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s.
A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.
With One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey created a work without precedent in American literature, a novel at once comic and tragic that probes the nature of madness and sanity, authority and vitality. Greeted by unanimous acclaim when it was first published, the book has become and enduring favorite of readers.

38. The Laughing Sutra:
Iron & Silk, Mark Salzman's bestselling account of his adventures as an English teacher and martial arts student in China, introduced a writer of enormous charm and keen insight into the cultural chasm between East and West. Now Salzman returns to China in his first novel, which follows the adventures of Hsun-ching, a naive but courageous orphan, and the formidable and mysterious Colonel Sun, who together travel from mainland China to San Francisco, risking everything to track down an elusive Buddhist scripture called The Laughing Sutra. Part Tom Sawyer, part Tom Jones, The Laughing Sutra draws us into an irresistible narrative of danger and comedy that speaks volumes about the nature of freedom and the meaning of loyalty.

39. All The Pretty Horses by McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses, the first novel of the Border Trilogy, published in 1992, was an international bestseller, winning both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It tells the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself the last bewildered survivor of generations of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he ever imagined. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
Review: These three novels should establish Cormac McCarthy as a worthy inheritor of the mantle worn by William Faulkner. The first, All The Pretty Horses is probably the best because it introduces John Grady Cole, who should join the ranks of legendary fictional heroes.

40. The Catcher In The Rye
A 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. A controversial novel originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year with total sales of more than 65 million books. The novel's protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion. The novel also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, loss, connection, and alienation.

41. Pilgrim’s Wilderness.
This was the playbook for "Papa Pilgrim," born in 1941 as Robert Hale and the subject of Tom Kizzia's extraordinary "Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier." A reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, Mr. Kizzia spent more than 10 years tracking Pilgrim, his bedraggled wife and their 15 children—a harrowing story that could have played out only in a place as reliant on and mistrustful of government as McCarthy, Alaska.
A once-booming copper mining town, McCarthy is located in the 13-million-acre Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Its winter population is now only about 50 people.

42. Finder’s Keepers
On Thursday, February 26, 1981, Joey Coyle, impoverished and without steady employment, is down on his luck. Work has been scarce. He does not have money to buy the methamphetamine (speed) he has come to depend upon. He recruits two friends to drive him to his pusher to see if he can get an immediate fix with the promise of payment later in the day when a check for some part-time work is expected. The pusher is out, but as Joey and his friends head for home, they notice two yellow tubs in the roadway.
Joey, thinking one of the tubs would make a good toolbox for him, gets out of the car and discovers two bags of money totaling $1.2 million in one of the tubs. He and his companions grab the money and run. Author Mark Bowden relates how Joey spends the next seven days recruiting a Mob figure to launder the money, giving much of it away, overindulging in the drugs his system craves, and becoming increasingly paranoid.

43. Deliverance - Dickey
In this novel, four businessmen taking a weekend canoe trip down the untamed Cahulawassee River battle both nature and hill people in “kill-or-be-killed” situations. In lean prose, Dickey graphically details such incidents as a man being savagely sodomized at gunpoint, threats of castration, the sexual overtones of the death climb up a cliff, and the earthy epithets of men stalking and killing others

44. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky - Burrow
When several members of a family fall off the roof of a Chicago apartment building on a rainy summer day, the sole survivor is 11-year-old Rachel. Her mother, brother and baby sister all die, and the circumstances are mysterious. It looks like an attempted triple murder/suicide. But a boy who witnessed the fall claims there was a man on the roof as well.
This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl - and society's ideas of race, class, and beauty.


45. What is what? - Eggers
The civil war in Sudan through the eyes of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee now living in the United States. We follow his life as he's driven from his home as a boy and walks, with thousands of orphans, to Ethiopia, where he finds safety — for a time. Valentino's travels, truly Biblical in scope, bring him in contact with government soldiers, janjaweed-like militias, liberation rebels, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation — and a string of unexpected romances. Ultimately, Valentino finds safety in Kenya and, just after the millennium, is finally resettled in the United States, from where this novel is narrated. In this book, written with expansive humanity and surprising humor, we come to understand the nature of the conflicts in Sudan, the refugee experience in America, the dreams of the Dinka people, and the challenge one indomitable man faces in a world collapsing around him.

46. This Boy’s Life-This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move, yet they develop an extraordinarily close, almost telepathic relationship. As Toby fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of adolescence. His various schemes - running away to Alaska, forging checks, and stealing cars - lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.

47. Farewell to Manzanar-Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the nation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In."

48. A girl named Zippy- When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period–people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
-I laughed out loud more than once, what a funny, wonderful read!!!

49. ‘tis- this story is moving and the voice is, as always, unique. That said, this story is a much more familiar one than the last: Irish immigrant trying to make a life for himself in a new world, and a war-enraged America. This story, though, is much more tangible than "other" immigration stories and unique in that, throughout all the troubles, heartache, injustice, and anger, this is a story not burdened with self-pity. That's magic.