This summer, please read two (or more) books from the list below.
FICTION:
Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Does My Head Look Big in This?
Acevedo, Elizabeth. The Poet X or Clap When You Land.
Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God or others.
Aciman, André. Call Me By Your Name.
Adams, Douglas. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus, or The Thing Around Your Neck.
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women.
Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
Allende, Isabel. Paula, The House of the Spirits, or Inés of My Soul.
Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of Butterflies, How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, or others.
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me Ultima.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak, Chains, or Twisted.
Anderson, M.T. Feed.
Angelou, Maya. And Still I Rise or others.
Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot or The Foundation Series.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale or others.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice or others.
Baldwin, James. Go Tell It On the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, The Fire Next Time or others.
Barron, Rena. Kingdom of Souls or Reaper of Souls (series).
Block, Francesca Lia. Weetzie Bat (series), I Was a Teenage Fairy, or others.
Blume, Judy. Forever…
Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451.
Braithwaite, Oyinkan. My Sister, the Serial Killer.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Brooks, Geraldine. Caleb’s Crossing.
Brown, Jericho. The Tradition.
Bryant, Elise. Happily Every Afters.
Burns, Olive. Cold Sassy Tree.
Butler, Octavia. Kindred or Parable of the Sower.
Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game.
Carter, Angela. Burning Your Boats.
Carty-Williams, Candice. Queenie.
Cather, Willa. My Antonia or others.
Cela, Camilo José. The Family of Pascual Duarte.
Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening.
Chestnutt, Charles Waddell. The Conjure Woman.
Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express or others.
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street.
Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Water Dancer or Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet.
Cofer, Judith Ortiz. An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio.
Cole, Olivia A. A Conspiracy of Stars.
Condie, Ally. Matched (series).
Dashner, James. The Maze Runner (series).
Deloria, Ella Cara. Water Lily.
Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves.
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Sister of My Heart.
Doerr, Anthony. All The Light We Cannot See.
Donoso, Jose. The Obscene Bird of Night.
Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca, The Scapegoat, or Jamaica Inn.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man or others.
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Four Souls, The Night Watchman, or The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.
Farah, Nuruddin. Gifts.
Farmer, Nancy. The House of the Scorpion.
Ferrante, Elena. My Brilliant Friend.
Flake, Sharon. The Skin I’m In.
Forman, Gayle. If I Stay.
Frey, James. I Am Number Four.
Gansworth, Eric. Give Me Some Truth or If I Ever Get Out of Here.
Garcia, Christina. Dreaming in Cuban.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies.
Green, John. The Fault In Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, or Turtles All The Way Down.
Grimes, Nikki. Bronx Masquerade.
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Haley, Alex. Roots: The Saga of an American Family.
Harjo, Joy. Any works.
Harris, Kai. What The Fireflies Knew.
Herbert, Frank. Dune.
Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders.
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Hughes, Langston. The Ways of White Folks.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God or others.
Jackson, Tiffany D. Grown or Let Me Hear a Rhyme.
Jaramillo, Ann. La Línea.
Johnson, Charles R. Middle Passage.
Johnson, George M. All Boys Aren’t Blue.
Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
Jones, Tayari. An American Marriage.
Kadohata, Cynthia. Kira-Kira.
Kaufman, Amie. Illuminae.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek.
Kelly, Martha Hall. Lilac Girls or others.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Invention of Wings or The Secret Life of Bees.
Kincaid, Jamaica. At The Bottom of the River.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Bean Tree, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, or others.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts or China Men.
L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake.
Lalli, Sonya. Grown-Up Pose.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko.
LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness.
Levithan, David. Every Day.
Llosa, Mario Vargas. The Storyteller.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver (series).
Magloon, Kekla. How It Went Down or Fire In The Streets.
Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk.
Makine, Andrei. Dreams of My Russian Summers.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera.
Matute, Ana María. The Door of the Moon: Complete Stories.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved, Sula, Song of Solomon, Jazz, or The Bluest Eye.
Miller, Madeleine. Circe or The Song of Achilles.
Na, An. A Step From Heaven.
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You or Little Fires Everywhere.
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Sympathizer.
Nijkamp, Marieke (editor). Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens.
O’Connor, Flannery. Complete Stories.
Okorafor, Nnedi. Who Fears Death.
Orange, Tommy. There There.
Orwell, George. 1984 or Animal Farm.
Pamuk, Orhan. The Black Book, My Name is Red, or others.
Parker, Dorothy. Complete Stories.
Petry, Ann. The Street.
Philippe, Ben. The Field Guide to the North American Teenager.
Picoult, Jodi. My Sister’s Keeper.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar.
Potok, Chaim. The Chosen or My Name is Asher Lev.
Quintero, Isabel. Gabi, A Girl in Pieces.
Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo.
Reynolds, Jason. Ghost, Long Way Down, All American Boys, or When I Was The Greatest.
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea.
Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
Robinson, Marylin. Housekeeping.
Rodriguez, Luis. Always Running.
Roth, Veronica. Divergent (series).
Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things.
Sachar, Louis. Holes.
Saénz, Benjamin Alire. Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of the Universe.
Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. The Little Prince.
Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis.
Sayers, Dorothy K. Whose Body?
See, Lisa. The Island of Sea Women.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Almanac of the Dead or others.
Silvera, Adam. More Happy Than Not.
Sinha, Umi. Belonging.
Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Smith, Cynthia Leitich. Hearts Unbroken.
Smith, Dodie. I Capture the Castle.
Smith, Zadie. White Teeth.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus.
Spinelli, Jerry. Stargirl.
Stork, Francisco X. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, or The Kitchen God’s Wife.
Tartt, Donna. The Secret History or The Goldfinch.
Thiong’o, Ng?g? wa. The River Between.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give or Concrete Rose.
Tingle, Tim. House of Purple Cedar.
Tokarczuk, Olga. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina or War and Peace or others.
Toomer, Jean. Cane.
Torres, Justin. We The Animals.
Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Hummingbird’s Daughter.
Vizzini, Ned. It’s Kind of a Funny Story.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple, Meridian, or others.
Walls, Jeanette. The Glass Castle or Half Broke Horses.
Ward, Jesmyn. Salvage The Bones; Sing, Unburied, Sing; or others.
Weir, Andy. The Martian.
Welch, James. The Heartsong of Charging Elk.
Westerfield, Scott. Uglies (series) or Leviathan (series).
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad or The Nickel Boys.
Wideman, John Edgar. Brothers and Keepers.
Wiesel, Elie. Night.
Wingate, Lisa. Before We Were Yours.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse or others.
Wright, Richard. Native Son.
Yoon, Nicola. The Sun is Also a Star.
Zoboi, Ibi (editor). Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America.
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief or I Am the Messenger.
POETRY:
Baird, Blythe. Sweet, Young and Worried.
Benaim, Sabrina. Depression and Other Magic Tricks.
Carson, Ann. Autobiography of Red (a novel in verse).
Collins, Billy. Musical Tables.
Gansworth, Eric. Apple: (Skin to the Core).
Gill, Nikita. These Are the Words.
Gorman, Amanda. Call Us What We Carry,
Kaminsky, Ilya. Deaf Republic.
Kaur, Rupi. Milk and Honey.
Long Soldier, Layli. Whereas.
Lorde, Audre. The Selected Works.
Lovelace, Amanda. The Princess Saves Herself in This One.
O’Hara, Frank. Lunch Poems.
Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems.
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen.
Reynolds, Jason. Ain’t Burned All the Bright or For Everyone.
NON-FICTION:
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. Infidel: My Life.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. In My Father’s House.
Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time.
Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don’t Cry.
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.
Boggs, Grace Lee. The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century.
Boyle, Gregory. Tattoos on the Heart.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.
Brown, Jericho. The Tradition.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me and The Beautiful Struggle.
Collins, Patricia (editor). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment.
Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice From The South.
Cooper, Brittney. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower.
Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.
Curie, Eve. Madame Curie.
Davis, Angela Y. Angela Davis: An Autobiography.
Davis, Arianna. What Would Frida Do?: A Guide to Living Boldly.
Deloria Jr., Vine. Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk.
Durrell, Gerald. My Family and Other Animals.
Engle, Margarita. The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom.
Erdrich, Heid E. New Poets of Native Nations.
Estes, Nick. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks.
Foer, Jonathan Saffron. Everything Is Illuminated or Eating Animals.
Frank, Anne. Diary of Anne Frank.
Gay, Roxane. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body or Bad Feminist: Essays.
Gerald, Casey. There Will Be No Miracles Here.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
Gran, David. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
Green, Hannah. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.
Haley, Alex and Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval.
hooks, bell. All About Love; Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black; or others.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Jefferson, Margo. Negroland: A Memoir.
Jiang, Ji-li. Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution.
Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
Jones, Saeed. How We Fight For Our Lives.
Kahn, Roger. The Boys of Summer.
Kaling, Mindy. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life.
Kendi, Dr. Ibram X. How to Be Antiracist.
Kuper, Jack. Child of the Holocaust: A True Story.
Laymon, Kiese. Heavy: An American Memoir.
Levi, Primo. The Periodic Table.
Lorde, Audry. Sister Outsider.
Lusseyran, Jacques. And There Was Light.
Maraire, Nozipo J. Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter.
Martel, Yann. Life of Pi.
Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa.
McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes.
McKibbon, Bill. The End of Nature.
Miranda, Deborah A. Bad Indians.
Moraga, Cherríe (editor). This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark.
Mowat, Farley. Never Cry Wolf.
Mphahlele, Es’kia. Down Second Avenue.
Nelson, Marilyn. A Wreath For Emmett Till.
Nesteroff, Kliph. We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy.
Noah, Trevor. Born a Crime: Tales of a South African Childhood.
Northrup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave.
Obama, Michelle. Becoming.
Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want To Talk About Race.
Reed, Amy (editor). Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing up Female in America.
Reynolds, Jason and Ibram X. Kendi. Stamped: Antiracism and You.
Saad, Layla F. Me and White Supremacy.
Saidiya Hartman. Lose Your Mother.
Sanchez, Sonia. Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems.
Say, Allen. Drawing From Memory.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Brief Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Smith, Danez. Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems.
Standing Bear, Luther. My People The Sioux.
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A True Story of the Fight for Justice.
Tatum, Beverly Daniel. Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race.
Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets.
Trethewey, Natasha. Monument: Poems: New and Selected.
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery.
Westover, Tara. Educated.
Wiesel, Elie. Night.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.
Young, Damon. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays.
Yousafzai, Malala and Christina Lamb. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.
Compiled by Samantha Stier, English Department Chair