Literature for Life

Description

Literature for Life: A Thematic Introduction to Reading and Writing as both its title and content suggests, forges a close relationship between students’ reading and life experiences—the texts used are accessible, grounded, relatable, and meaningful. There’s enough range to suit instructors of many backgrounds, experiences, and strengths and to encourage instructors to better teaching and students to better learning. Literature for Life is organized around seven enduring themes: Families, Love, Life’s Journeys, Individual and Society, Personal Identity, Nature and the Environment, and War and Peace. Each theme is divided into clusters that provide instructors with useful teaching units.

X. J. Kennedy, after graduation from Seton Hall and Columbia, became a journalist second class in the Navy (“Actually, I was pretty eighth class”). His poems, some published in the New Yorker, were first collected in Nude Descending a Staircase (1961). Since then he has written six more collections, several widely adopted literature and writing textbooks, and seventeen books for children, including two novels. He has taught at Michigan, North Carolina (Greensboro), California (Irvine), Wellesley, Tufts, and Leeds. Cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and reprinted in some 200 anthologies, his verse has brought him a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lamont Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an Aiken-Taylor prize, the Robert Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, and the Award for Poetry for Children from the National Council of Teachers of English. He now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he and his wife Dorothy have collaborated on four books and five children.

Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and critic. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and three collections of criticism, most notably Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. A best-selling literary anthologist, Gioia has edited or co-edited over two dozen collections of poetry, fiction, and drama. He has also written two opera libretti and has collaborated with composers in genres ranging from classical to jazz and rock. For six years (2003-2009) he served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts where he gained strong bipartisan support for the previously imperiled agency and helped launch the largest literary programs in federal history, including The Big Read, Poetry Out Loud, and Shakespeare in American Communities. He was twice unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. For two years he directed the arts and culture programs for the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. and Colorado. He is currently the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.

Nina Revoyr is the author of four novels, The Necessary Hunger, Southland, and The Age of Dreaming. Southland was a Book Sense 76 pick, won the Lambda Literary Award, and was a Los Angeles Times “Best Book” of 2003. The Age of Dreaming was a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles.

Literature for Life, as both its title and content suggests, forges a close relationship between students’ reading and life experiences—the texts used are accessible, grounded, relatable, and meaningful.  There’s enough range to suit instructors of many backgrounds, experiences, and strengths and to encourage instructors to better teaching and students to better learning.

Literature for Life is available as a package with Kennedy and Gioia’s The Literature Collection: An eText: ISBN-0321904281. 

Click here to watch a four-minute walkthrough of The Literature Collection: http://media.pearsoncmg.com/long/kennedy_collection_demo/KC2Ccamproj.html.
 

• Literature for Life is organized around seven enduring themes: Families, Love, Life’s Journeys, Individual and Society, Personal Identity, Nature and the Environment, and War and Peace. Each theme is divided into clusters that provide instructors with useful teaching units.
• The clusters also offer students a learning “handle” through which to study the selections within the cluster. For example, in the Families theme, there is poetry cluster called “Children Looking at Parents, Parents Looking at Children,” which gives students an accessible and interesting lens with which to study these poems: Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays,” Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz,” Sylvia Plath, “Daddy,” Weldon Kees, “For My Daughter,” and Sharon Olds, “Rite of Passage.” 
• All the themes open with an introduction and “Things to Think About” questions that give students ideas  to consider. Themes conclude with writing suggestions which extend and complement the topics that have been raised. 
• Clusters include a contextual introduction and conclude with writing prompts. 
•  The Table of Contents is a thoughtful mix of beloved classics as well as new voices. All literary selections include headnotes and study questions. 
• Author portraits, production shots, and related photographs provide a rich visual experience for students.
• Seven casebooks help students connect to key works of literature through the critical texts and images included and provide ample opportunity for research. Featured casebooks are: Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Sophocle’s Oedipus, T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Shakespeare’s Othello, Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and the poetry of Langston Hughes.
• Seven authors are represented in-depth. They include Gwendolyn Brooks, Kate Chopin, William Shakespeare (poetry), Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
• Four chapters provide students with useful and accessible strategies for reading literature as well as clear effective coverage of the literary elements. Each chapter concludes with extremely useful and clear checklists that provide a targeted summary of the key content in the chapter.
• Six chapters cover writing and 12 student models are given. In addition, there is a chapter on the research paper that includes a comprehensive reference guide to MLA documentation.
• Chapter 19 covers critical approachs to literature followed by a glossary of literary terms.
• The esteemed author team of X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia are joined by novelist Nina Revoyr in the creation of this new thematic anthology.

Short Table of Contents

READING AND THINKING ABOUT LITERATURE

1. LITERATURE AND LIFE
2. READING A STORY
3. READING A POEM
4. READING A PLAY
5. READING AN ESSAY

WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

6. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
7. WRITING ABOUT A STORY
8. WRITING ABOUT A POEM
9. WRITING ABOUT A PLAY
10. WRITING ABOUT AN ESSAY
11. WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER
REFERENCE GUIDE FOR MLA CITATIONS

THEMES OF LITERATURE, THEMES OF LIFE

12. FAMILIES
13. LOVE
14. LIFE’S JOURNEY
15. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
16. PERSONAL IDENTITY
17. NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
18. WAR AND PEACE

19, CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE

GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS

Detailed Table of Contents
1. LITERATURE AND LIFE

Why Are You In this Course?
Why Study Literature and Writing?
Getting a Job
• Career Growth
• Reading and Writing Are Critical Skills
Fifty Famous English Majors
• You May Have Several Careers
• Are You Prepared?
Literature for Life
Kenneth McClane, “Sonny’s Blues” Saved My Life
• The Value of Literature
• By Way of an Ending
Charles Bukowski, Dostoevsky
Emily Dickinson, There is no Frigate like a Book

2. READING A STORY
The Art of Fiction
Types of Short Fiction
Elements of Fiction
• Plot
• Point of View
• Character
• Setting
• Tone and Style
• Symbol
• Theme
John Updike A & P
Edgar Allan Poe The Tell-Tale Heart
Katherine Mansfield Miss Brill
CHECKLISTS: Analyzing a Story

3. READING A POEM
Types of Poetry: Lyric, Narrative, Dramatic

W. H. Auden Funeral Blues
Edwin Arlington Robinson Richard Cory
Margaret Atwood Siren Song

Reading a Poem
Elements of Poetry
• Tone
Emily Dickinson Wild Nights — Wild Nights!
• Words
Gina Valdés English Con Salsa
• Denotation and Connotation
Robert Frost Nothing Gold Can Stay
• Imagery
Langston Hughes Harlem [Dream Deferred]
• Figures of Speech
• Sound
• Rhythm
• Form: Closed Form and Open Form
Michael Drayton Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part
Matsuo Basho Temple bells die out
Matsuo Basho Heat-lightning streak
Taniguchi Buson Moonrise on mudflats
Kobayashi Issa only one guy
Anonymous Epitaph on a Dentist
E. E. Cummings in Just-
• Symbol
What Is Poetry?
CHECKLISTS: Analyzing a Poem

4. READING A PLAY
Reading a Play
Theatrical Conventions
Modes of Drama: Tragedy and Comedy
Elements of a Play
Susan Glaspell Trifles
Analyzing Trifles
• Conflict
• Plot
• Subplot
• Protagonist
• Exposition
• Dramatic Question
• Climax
• Resolution and Dénouement
• Rising and Falling Action
• Unity of Time, Place, and Action
• Symbols
CHECKLISTS: Analyzing a Play

5. READING AN ESSAY
What Is an Essay?
History of the Essay
Types of Essays
• Narrative Essay
• Descriptive
• Expository
• Argumentative
Elements of Essays
• Voice
• Style
• Structure
• Theme
Joan Didion On Morality
Amy Tan Mother Tongue
CHECKLIST: Analyzing an Essay

WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

6. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
Read Actively
Robert Frost Nothing Gold Can Stay
SAMPLE STUDENT READING ANNOTATION
Plan Your Essay
Prewriting: Discover Your Ideas
SAMPLE STUDENT PREWRITING EXERCISES
• Brainstorm
• Cluster
• List
• Freewrite
• Journal
• Outline
Develop a Literary Argument
CREATE AN ARGUMENT
• Purpose
• Audience
• Thesis
BUILD AN ARGUMENT
• Claims
• Persuasion
• Evidence
• Warrants
• Credibility
CHECKLIST: Developing an Argument
SAMPLE STUDENT ROUGH DRAFT
Revise Your Draft
CHECKLIST: Revising Your Draft
SAMPLE STUDENT ARGUMENT PAPER
Document Sources to Avoid Plagiarism
The Form of Your Finished Paper
Spell-Check and Grammar Check Programs
Anonymous A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers

7. WRITING ABOUT A STORY
Read Actively
SAMPLE STUDENT READING ANNOTATION
Prewriting: Discover Your Ideas
SAMPLE STUDENT PREWRITING EXERCISES
Write a Rough Draft
CHECKLIST: Writing a Rough Draft
Revise Your Draft
CHECKLIST: Revising Your Draft
What’s Your Purpose? Common Approaches to Writing About Fiction
• Explication
SAMPLE STUDENT EXPLICATION PAPER
• Analysis
SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS PAPER
• Comparison and Contrast
SAMPLE STUDENT COMPARISON AND CONTRAST PAPER
• Response Paper
SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE PAPER
Topics for Writing

8. WRITING ABOUT A POEM

Read Actively
Robert Frost Design
SAMPLE STUDENT READING ANNOTATION
Prewriting: Discover Your Ideas
SAMPLE STUDENT PREWRITING EXERCISES
Write a Rough Draft
CHECKLIST: Writing a Rough Draft
Revise Your Draft
CHECKLIST: Revising Your Draft
Common Approaches to Writing About Poetry
• Explication
SAMPLE STUDENT EXPLICATION PAPER
• Analysis
SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS PAPER
• Comparison and Contrast
Abbie Huston Evans Wing-Spread
SAMPLE STUDENT COMPARISON AND CONTRAST PAPER
How to Quote a Poem
Topics for Writing
Robert Frost In White

9. WRITING ABOUT A PLAY

Read Critically
SAMPLE STUDENT READING ANNOTATION
Common Approaches to Writing About Drama
• Explication
• Analysis
• Comparison and Contrast
• Drama Review
SAMPLE STUDENT DRAMA REVIEW
How to Quote a Play
Topics for Writing

10. WRITING ABOUT AN ESSAY
Read Actively
Think About the Essay
Prewriting: Discover and Shape Your Ideas
Common Approaches to Writing About Drama
• Explication
• Analysis
• Comparison and Contrast
• Response Paper
SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE PAPER
Topics for Writing

11. WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER
Browse the Research
Choose a Topic
Begin Your Research
CHECKLIST: Finding Reliable Sources
CHECKLIST: Using Visual Images
Evaluate Your Sources
CHECKLIST: Evaluating Your Sources
Organize Your Research
Refine Your Thesis
Organize Your Paper
Acknowledge All Sources
• Quotations
• Citing Ideas
Documents Sources using MLA Style
SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: Research Paper

REFERENCE GUIDE FOR MLA CITATIONS

THEMES OF LITERATURE, THEMES OF LIFE

12. FAMILIES

FICTION

PARENTS AND CHILDREN
Amy Tan A Pair of Tickets
William Faulkner Barn Burning
Luke Parable of the Prodigal Son
Alice Walker Everyday Use
Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Parents and Children

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
ALICE WALKER’S “EVERYDAY USE”

Alice Walker on Writing
Alice Walker The Black Woman Writer in America

Criticism and Cultural Contexts
Barbara T. Christian “Everyday Use” and the Black Power Movement
Mary Helen Washington “Everyday Use” as a Portrait of the Artist
Elaine Showalter Quilt as Metaphor in “Everyday Use”
Houston A. Baker and
Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Stylish vs. Sacred in “Everyday Use”

Images: Alice Walker and Her World
Alice Walker in conversation
Scenes from Everyday Use (2003 film adaptation)
Alice Walker at home surrounded by quilt art
Lone Star Quilt Pattern

Suggestions for Writing: “Everyday Use” in Context

BROTHERS AND SISTERS
James Baldwin Sonny’s Blues
Tobias Wolff The Rich Brother
Eudora Welty Why I Live at the P.O.
Louise Erdrich The Red Convertible

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Brothers and Sisters

POETRY

CHILDREN LOOKING AT PARENTS, PARENTS LOOKING AT CHILDREN
Robert Hayden Those Winter Sundays
Theodore Roethke My Papa’s Waltz
Rhina P. Espaillat Bilingual / Bilingüe
Sylvia Plath Daddy
Weldon Kees For My Daughter
Sharon Olds Rite of Passage

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Parents and Children

FAMILY LEGACIES
Robert Hayden The Whipping
Ted Kooser A Room in the Past
Seamus Heaney Digging
Julia Alvarez By Accident
Li-Young Lee The Gift
Diane Thiel The Minefield

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Family Legacies

POET IN DEPTH: FAMILY BONDS
A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS
Gwendolyn Brooks Sadie and Maud
Gwendolyn Brooks the mother
Gwendolyn Brooks the rites for Cousin Vit
Gwendolyn Brooks The Bean Eaters
Gwendolyn Brooks Speech to the Young. Speech to the Progress-Toward

Suggestions for Writing: Gwendolyn Brooks’s Poetry

ESSAYS

CHILD INTO ADULT
Brent Staples The Runaway Son
Raymond Carver My Father’s Life
Annie Dillard An American Childhood

Suggestions for Writing: Essays About Childhood and Growing Up

DRAMA

FAMILY DRAMA
Sophocles Oedipus the King (Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
SOPHOCLES’S OEDIPUS THE KING

Historical and Cultural Contexts
Ellen Meese Background for Reading Oedipus the King
1. THE ORIGINS OF GREEK THEATER
2. THE CIVIC ROLE OF GREEK DRAMA
3. TRAGEDY AND THE TRAGIC HERO
4. THE ORIGINS OF OEDIPUS THE KING
5. THE OEDIPUS LEGEND

Criticism and Cultural Contexts
Aristotle Defining Tragedy
Sigmund Freud The Destiny of Oedipus
E. R. Dodds On Misunderstanding Oedipus
A. E. Haigh The Irony of Sophocles

Images: Oedipus in Art and Performance
Athenian Theater
Etruscan Pottery: Oedipus and the Sphinx
Oedipus and Antigone by Rudolph Tegner
Production photos from Oedipus the King

Suggestions for Writing: Oedipus the King in Context

Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun

Suggestions for Writing: A Raisin in the Sun

Further Suggestions for Writing: Literature About Families

13. LOVE

FICTION

DISCOVERING LOVE
Margaret Atwood Happy Endings
O. Henry The Gift of the Magi
Alice Munro How I Met My Husband

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Discovering Love

LOVE GONE WRONG
William Faulkner A Rose for Emily
Zora Neale Hurston Sweat
Flannery O’Connor Parker’s Back
Max Apple Vegetable Love

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Love Gone Wrong

WRITER IN DEPTH: TROUBLED MARRIAGES
A COLLECTION OF STORIES BY KATE CHOPIN
Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin The Storm
Kate Chopin Désirée’s Baby

Suggestions for Writing: Chopin’s Stories About Troubled Marriages

POETRY

LOVE POEMS
Anne Bradstreet To My Dear and Loving Husband
Elizabeth Barrett Browning How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
William Butler Yeats When You Are Old
E. E. Cummings somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond
Rafael Campo For J. W.
Wislawa Szymborska True Love
Wendy Cope Lonely Hearts

Suggestions for Writing: Love Poems

LOVE, SEX, AND DESIRE
Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress
John Donne The Flea
Edna St. Vincent Millay What lips my lips have kissed
Sharon Olds Sex Without Love
Marilyn Nelson The Ballad of Aunt Geneva
Kim Addonizio First Poem for You

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Love, Sex, and Desire

POET IN DEPTH: LOVE AND LOVE’S ILLUSIONS
A COLLECTION OF SONNETS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakespeare When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes
William Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
William Shakespeare When my love swears that she is made of truth

Suggestions for Writing: Shakespeare’s Sonnets

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
T. S. ELIOT’S “THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”

T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Historical Contexts
Publishing “Prufrock”
Early Reviewers of “Prufrock”

Criticism and Cultural Contexts
Denis Donoghue One of the Irrefutable Poets
Christopher Ricks What’s in a Name?
Maud Ellmann Will There Be Time?
M. L. Rosenthal Adolescents Singing

Images: Eliot and His Age
Portrait of Eliot by Wyndham Lewis
Poetry Magazine, June 1915
Signature
Photographs of Eliot at age 19
Prufrock Goes Graphic

Suggestions for Writing: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Context

ESSAYS AND OTHER NON-FICTION

REMEMBERING LOVE

Paul 1 Corinthians 13
Cynthia Ozick Lovesickness
Judith Ortiz Cofer I Fell in Love, or My Hormones Awakened
Mike Ives Would Hemingway Cry?
H. L. Mencken Remembering Sara: Diary Entry

Suggestions for Writing: Non-Fiction About Remembering Love

DRAMA

LOVE: COMIC AND TRAGIC
David Ives Sure Thing

Suggestions for Writing:Ives’s Sure Thing

William Shakespeare Othello, the Moor of Venice
Picturing Othello: production photos

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO

Historical Contexts
The Theater of Shakespeare
Source Material for Othello

Criticism and Cultural Contexts
Anthony Burgess An Asian Culture Looks at Shakespeare
W. H. Auden Iago as a Triumphant Villain
Maud Bodkin Lucifer in Shakespeare’s Othello
Virginia Mason Vaughan Black and White in Othello

Images: Othello in Performance
Globe Theater
A Portfolio of Players: Famous Othellos in Performance
Othello in translation
Othello as Ballet
Othello as Opera

Suggestions for Writing: Othello in Context
Further Suggestions for Writing: Literature About Love

14. LIFE’S JOURNEY

FICTION

CHILDHOOD & ADOLESCENCE
James Joyce Araby
ZZ Packer Brownies
Michael Chabon The Little Knife

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Childhood and Adolescence

DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS
Nathanial Hawthorne Young Goodman Brown
Flannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Dangerous Encounters
CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
JOYCE CAROL OATES’S “WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

Fact Into Fiction
Don Moser The Pied Piper of Tucson: He Cruised in a Golden Car, Looking for Action

Fiction Into Film
Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film
Brenda O. Daly An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the Movies
Rebecca Sumner Smoothing Out the Rough Spots: The Film Adaptation of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
B. Ruby Rich Good Girls, Bad Girls: Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk

Images: “Where Are You Going?” and Media
Life Magazine Spread
Scenes from Smooth Talk

Suggestions for Writing: ”Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” in Context

BARGAINING WITH DEATH
Somerset Maugham An Appointment in Samarra
Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm Godfather Death
Chinua Achebe Dead Men’s Path

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Bargaining with Death

DEATH AND TRANSFORMATION
Franz Kafka The Metamorphosis

Suggestions for Writing: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

POETRY

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE
William Blake London
Gwendolyn Brooks We Real Cool
Countee Cullen Incident
Judith Ortiz Cofer Quinceañera
Dylan Thomas Fern Hill

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Childhood and Adolescence

LIFE’S CHALLENGES
Thomas Hardy The Ruined Maid
A. E. Housman When I was one-and-twenty
John Updike The Ex-Basketball Player
Elizabeth Bishop One Art
Natasha Threthewey White Lies
Antonio Machado Caminante / Traveler

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Life’s Challenges

FACING DEATH
Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night
John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be
W. S. Merwin For the Anniversary of My Death
José Emilio Pacheco La Ceniza / Ashes
E. E. Cummings Buffalo Bill ‘s
Sylvia Plath Lady Lazarus

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Facing Death

FAITH, DOUBT, AND MORTALITY
John Donne Death be not proud
Christina Rossetti Uphill
Thomas Hardy Hap
Emily Dickinson Because I could not stop for Death
Kevin Young Late Blues
Gary Soto Heaven

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Faith, Doubt, and Mortality

POET IN DEPTH: LIFE AND ITS CROSSROADS
A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY ROBERT FROST
Robert Frost The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost Fire and Ice
Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost Desert Places

Suggestions for Writing: Robert Frost’s Poetry

ESSAYS

TURNING POINTS

James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son
George Orwell Shooting an Elephant
Sacha Z. Scoblic Rock Star, Meet Teetotaler
Steve Martin Disneyland
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On the Fear of Death

Suggestions for Writing: Essays About Turning Points

DRAMA

LIFE PASSAGES

Tennessee Williams A Glass Menagerie
Terrence McNally Andre’s Mother

Suggestions for Writing: Drama About Life Passages

Further Suggestions for Writing: Literature About Life’s Journey

15. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

FICTION

CONFORMITY, REBELLION, AND DISSENT
Shirley Jackson The Lottery
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Harrison Bergeron
Ursula K. Le Guin The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Ha Jin Saboteur

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Conformity, Rebellion, and Dissent

INDIVIDUALS IN ISOLATION
Ernest Hemingway A Clean Well-Lighted Place
Ralph Ellison Battle Royal
John Cheever The Swimmer

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Individuals in Isolation

POETRY

LONELINESS AND COMMUNITY
William Carlos Williams Danse Russe
E. E. Cummings anyone lived in a pretty how town
Stevie Smith Not Waving but Drowning
Allen Ginsberg A Supermarket in California
Anne Sexton Her Kind
Pablo Neruda Muchos Somos / We Are Many

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Loneliness and Community

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS CONFORMITY
Walt Whitman I Hear America Singing
Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy
Robert Frost Mending Wall
W. H. Auden The Unknown Citizen
Mary Oliver Wild Geese
Marilyn Nelson A Strange Beautiful Woman

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Individualism Versus Conformity

POET IN DEPTH: SELECTING YOUR OWN SOCIETY
A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON
Emily Dickinson I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Emily Dickinson The Soul selects her own Society
Emily Dickinson This is my letter to the World
Emily Dickinson Much Madness is divinest Sense
Emily Dickinson Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

Suggestions for Writing: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
THE POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON
Emily Dickinson ON Writing
Emily Dickinson Recognizing Poetry
Emily Dickinson Self Description
Criticism and Cultural Contexts
Thomas Wentworth Higginson Meeting Emily Dickinson
Thomas H. Johnson The Discovery of Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts
Richard Wilbur The Three Privations of Emily Dickinson
Sandra M. Gilbert
and Susan Gubar The Freedom of Emily Dickinson

Images: Dickinson and Her World
Dickinson Homestead Photo
Dickinson’s Room
Portrait of Emily Dickinson
U.S. Commemorative Stamp
Manuscript Facsimile

Suggestions for Writing: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson in Context

ESSAYS

INSPIRING SOCIAL CHANGE
Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from Birmingham Jail
Henry David Thoreau On Civil Disobedience
Maxine Hong Kingston No Name Woman

Suggestions for Writing: Essays About Inspiring Social Change

DRAMA

THE INDIVIDUAL VERSUS AUTHORITY
Sophocles Antigonê

Suggestions for Writing: Sophocles’s Antigonê

Further Suggestions for Writing: Literature About the Individual and Society
16. PERSONAL IDENTITY

FICTION

BECOMING AN INDIVIDUAL
Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper
David Leavitt A Place I’ve Never Been
Sherman Alexie This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Becoming an Individual

PERSONAL CHANGE
John Steinbeck The Chrysanthemums
Raymond Carver Cathedral
Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies
Yiyun Li A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Personal Change

POETRY

MEN AND WOMEN
Sylvia Plath Metaphors
Anne Stevenson Sous-entendu
Carole Satyamurti I Shall Paint My Nails Red
Charles Bukowski my old man
Denise Levertov The Ache of Marriage
Wendy Cope Rondeau Redoublé
Donald Justice Men at Forty
Marge Piercy Barbie Doll

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Men and Women

CULTURAL AND PERSONAL ORIGINS
Francisco X. Alarcon The X in My Name
Paul Laurence Dunbar We Wear the Mask
Shirley Geok-lin Lim Learning to Love America
Edwin Arlington Robinson New England
Rhina Espaillat Bodega
Andrew Hudgins Elegy for My Father, Who Is not Dead
Ted Kooser So This Is Nebraska

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Cultural and Personal Origins

POET IN DEPTH: “I, TOO, SING AMERICA”
A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY LANGSTON HUGHES
Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes I, Too
Langston Hughes Weary Blues
Langston Hughes Theme for English B
Langston Hughes Dream Boogie
Langston Hughes Mother to Son

Suggestions for Writing: Langston Hughes’s Poetry

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK
THE POETRY OF LANGSTON HUGHES

Langston Hughes on Writing
Langston Hughes The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes On the Harlem Renaissance

Criticism and Cultural Contexts
Rita Dove and
Marilyn Nelson The Voices in Langston Hughes
Arnold Rampersad Hughes as an Experimentalist
Darryl Pinckney Black Identity in Langston Hughes

Images: Hughes and His World
Portrait of Langston Hughes
Photograph of Langston Hughes with Fans
Photograph of Lenox Avenue, Harlem
Postage Stamp of Langston Hughes
Cover Art of FIRE!!

Suggestions for Writing: The Poetry of Langston Hughes in Context

ESSAYS
DEFINING SELF
Frederick Douglass Learning to Read and Write
Virginia Woolf What If Shakespeare Had a Sister?
Richard Rodriguez “Blaxicans” and Other Reinvented Americans

Suggestions for Writing: Essays About Defining Self

DRAMA
PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION
Henrik Ibsen A Doll’s House

Suggestions for Writing: Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Further Suggestions for Writing: Literature About Personal Identity

17. NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

FICTION

HUMANITY VERSUS NATURE
Jack London To Build a Fire
Stephen Crane Open Boat
T. Coraghessan Boyle Greasy Lake

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Humanity Versus Nature

LIVING WITH NATURE
Ursula K. Le Guin She Unnames Them
Leslie Marmon Silko The Man to Send Rain Clouds
Terry Bisson Bears Discover Fire

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Living with Nature

ANIMALS AS ALLEGORY: THREE ANIMAL FABLES
Aesop The Grasshopper and the Ant
Bidpai The Camel and His Friends
Chuang Tzu Independence

Suggestions for Writing: Animal Fables

POETRY

NATURE
William Blake To see a world in a grain of sand
Walt Whitman When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
William Butler Yeats The Lake Isle of Innisfree
H. D. Storm
Robinson Jeffers Carmel Point
Elizabeth Bishop The Fish
Dana Gioia California Hills in August
Benjamin Alire Sáenz To the Desert

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Nature

ANIMALS: SYMBOLIC AND REAL
William Blake The Tyger
Lewis Carroll Jabberwocky
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale
Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush
Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Robinson Jeffers Rock and Hawk
Phillis Levin Brief Bio
Kay Ryan Turtle

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Animals

J

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sporadically. Literature for Life, as both its title and content suggests, attempts to forge a

close relationship between students’ reading and life experiences.”

—Erin Radcliffe, Central New Mexico College

“These chapters (reading chapters) are flat-out superb, at least for me: They include and

“codify” every element I have used to break down our literature structurally, which the

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defined and well-illustrated bits on poetics: meter, imagery, etc. This whole chapter is an

orderly, clear, comprehensive, and very teachable masterpiece.”

—Vicki J. Sapp, Tarrant County College

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thought into selecting texts that will work for many, many types of students, and this is

important. I can definitely see myself selecting this text for use. I would have to do very

little to supplement this text in my classes. I will propose its acceptance to our textbook

committee once it is in print.”

—Anne C. Spurlock, Mississippi State University

“I do think this will resonate with students based on the approach of the text. Students

often don’t see the relevance of literature, but the themes are such that students see the

connection between the writings and their own lives.”

—Africa Fine, Palm Beach State College

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—Rebecca McLauchlin Whitten, Mississippi State University

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