American Literature

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The Glass Castle is a nonfiction memoir published by American journalist Jeannette Walls. Published in 2005, book chronicles Walls and her three siblings’ nomadic and impoverished upbringing by their severely maladjusted parents. In recounting her childhood, Walls explores themes like Letting Go of Childhood Illusions, The Struggle to Understand a Parent’s Poor Choices, The Destructiveness of Codependent Relationships, and The Connection Between Poverty and Abuse.A critical and popular success, The Glass Castle remained on the... Read The Glass Castle Summary

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Tennessee Williams, who wrote The Glass Menagerie in 1944, refers to the work as a “memory play” (750). Now recognized as one of the greatest American playwrights in history, The Glass Menagerie launched Williams’s career. The play is heavily influenced by Williams’s own life. The character of Laura is based on Williams’s older sister, Rose (alluded to by Laura’s nickname, Blue Roses), who was subjected to a botched lobotomy that rendered her mentally disabled and... Read The Glass Menagerie Summary

An instant success, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” was published in 1843. Poe submitted the short story to a writing competition that was sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. “The Gold-Bug” was awarded first place and subsequently published in three installments. The story was Poe’s most widely read work during his lifetime. Other works by Poe include “The Oval Portrait”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and “The Black Cat”. This guide refers to the 2021 Amazon Kindle... Read The Gold Bug Summary

The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. The novel explores the intricacies of marriage and affairs in the early 19th century through the affair of Amerigo and Charlotte, who were once in love but too poor to marry. Amerigo instead marries Maggie, and Charlotte marries Maggie’s father, a wealthy American museum curator. While Amerigo is at first happy with his new wife, the time she spends with her father creates an opportunity... Read The Golden Bowl Summary

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a classic novel by American author John Steinbeck. It centers on the Joads, an Oklahoma family evicted from their farm following the 1930s dust storms which ruined local crops. Losing their land, the Joads travel to California to seek work. On their journey they encounter hardship, prejudice, and police intimidation. However, when they get there, things become worse. They must stay in squalid camps and discover that work for... Read The Grapes of Wrath Summary

The Great Gatsby is a fiction novel published in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Inspired by Fitzgerald’s experiences during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby captures the prosperity and the hedonism of the era through a cast of characters who reside in the fictional Long Island towns of West Egg and East Egg. Despite a cold reaction from critics and audiences upon its release, many modern scholars include The... Read The Great Gatsby Summary

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In October of 1936, American journalist and novelist John Steinbeck wrote a series of essay-style articles for The San Francisco News on the migration of hundreds of thousands of white farmworkers from the Midwest and the South to work in California’s booming agricultural sector. Known together as The Harvest Gypsies, these seven articles are compiled in the nonfiction book The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, which was first published in... Read The Harvest Gypsies Summary

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) is a Southern Gothic novel written by Carson McCullers, one of the most prominent American literary voices of the 20th century. Set in a small unnamed town, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter captures the spiritual isolation and loneliness of five ordinary people in the deep American South in the 1930s. McCullers is known for her contributions to the development of the Southern Gothic subgenre, and her novels... Read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Summary

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Wendy Wasserstein’s play The Heidi Chronicles first opened Off-Broadway with Playwrights Horizons in 1988, transferring to Broadway for a successful run in 1989. The play follows Heidi Holland from the ages of 16 to 40 as she explores her desires for her own life, inspired by the liberation of feminism, but tempered by gendered expectations in a patriarchal society. Critics celebrated the play for introducing feminism into mainstream theater. Wasserstein wrote 11 plays, and The... Read The Heidi Chronicles Summary

The Help is a 2009 novel by American novelist Kathryn Stockett. Set during the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, it focuses on the lives of Black maids working in white households during the civil rights movement. Praised for its unflinching depiction of the lives of these women combined with a pointed sense of humor, The Help went on to be a massive bestseller, selling over five million copies and spending more than a hundred weeks... Read The Help Summary

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The House Behind the Cedars revolves around the fates of two siblings, John and Rena. As a girl, their mother, Molly Walden, is picked out by a wealthy white man in the town of Patesville on account of her unusual beauty (Molly is African American with light skin and stereotypically white features). This unnamed man takes Molly as his concubine, installs her in the titular house behind the cedars, and fathers John and Rena.When John... Read The House Behind the Cedars Summary