The Color Purple is an epistolary novel—a novel told in letter form—in which Alice Walker traces the gradual liberation of Celie, a poor, Black woman who must overcome abuse and separation from her beloved sister Nettie. Set in the South and an unnamed African country during the 1930 to 1940s, the novel is a study in the ways in which Black women use their faith, relationships, and creativity to survive racial and sexual oppression. Several... Read The Color Purple Summary

The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron, is a work of historical fiction that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. The first-person account of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt begins and ends in the prison where Nat Turner, an African American slave, was held before, during, and following his trial. Turner awaits execution as the leader of the two-day slave rebellion that started in Southampton County and ended with the death of approximately 55... Read The Confessions of Nat Turner Summary

The Corrections is a 2001 novel by Jonathan Franzen that won the National Book Award. Franzen is the author of several essay collections and novels, including the novels Freedom, Purity, and Crossroads. He has received many awards for his work, including the Whiting Award in 1988 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996.The main action of the novel takes place during the turn of the 21st century, a time of great financial prosperity in the United... Read The Corrections Summary

The Denial of Death was written by the American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and published in 1973. The work explores the fear of death and the ways in which rituals and beliefs have helped humans to cope with it throughout history. It was inspired by the fact that Becker had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Over the course of his life, he taught at several prestigious universities, including Syracuse University, UC Berkeley, and, by... Read The Denial of Death Summary

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The Echo Maker (2006) is a psychological mystery thriller by American author Richard Powers. The novel follows protagonist Mark Schluter in the wake of an accidental brain injury that led him to believe that his sister, Karin, is an imposter. The resulting conflict leads to questions of meaning, perception, and identity. The author of 13 books as of 2023, Powers has won numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize in 2003, a National Book Award for... Read The Echo Maker Summary

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The Executioner’s Song (1979) is a work of literary true crime by American author Norman Mailer. The book portrays the last nine months of the life of Gary Gilmore, who kills two men after being released from prison. Using interviews, court records, and witness accounts, Mailer pieces together the story of Gilmour’s trial and execution, exploring The Death Penalty as Public Spectacle, The Influence of Love and Hate in Human Lives, and Individual Will Versus... Read The Executioner's Song Summary

Donna Tartt’s 2013 novel, The Goldfinch, was a national best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. It follows the life of Theo Decker from his early teens into his late twenties. The novel is told in five parts and begins when Theo is hiding out in a hotel room in Amsterdam as an adult. It moves back in time and finally makes a circle back to his adulthood, explaining the reason for his stay... Read The Goldfinch Summary

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 Hours is a 1998 novel by the American author Michael Cunningham. It is an homage to Virginia Woolf’s 1923 novel Mrs. Dalloway (of which the working title was “The Hours”). Mimicking Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narrative style, Cunningham re-situates her characters and themes within a modern context, making them his own. The story follows three different women, in three different decades, affected by Mrs. Dalloway over the course of one June day in each of their... Read The Hours Summary

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Edward P. Jones’s novel The Known World, published in 2003 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2004), tells the interconnected stories of the people living at the antebellum Virginia plantation of Henry Townsend, a black slaveowner. The novel begins on the night of Henry’s death in 1855, but the story is not linear. The narrative seamlessly moves both backward in time to provide context for characters and forward in time to reveal characters’... Read The Known World Summary

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Like his 2016 bestseller, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (2019) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Whitehead is only the fourth writer in history to win two Pulitzers). The Nickel Boys describes life in a reform school from the point of view of young Black teenager. Whitehead based Nickel Academy on the real life Dozier School, a Florida facility that ran for over a century, until a university investigation publicized its racist... Read The Nickel Boys Summary

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In The Old Man and the Sea, a 1952 adventure novella by American author Ernest Hemingway, an aging fisherman pits his life and wits against a giant fish as he battles to catch it and then protect its flesh from ravenous sharks. With its themes of endurance, perseverance, and respect for one’s opponent, this simple, straightforward narrative is widely regarded as an American classic and one of the greatest sea stories ever told.The book helped... Read The Old Man and the Sea Summary

Eudora Welty’s novel The Optimist’s Daughter was published in 1972 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. Welty, who was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1906, originally wrote the The Optimist’s Daughter as a short story for The New Yorker, in which it was published in 1969. Welty is widely known as a Southern writer because her fiction is derived from the politics, people, and culture of the American South. Before becoming... Read The Optimist's Daughter Summary