Am. Fic. at the College Level
What are our students reading in their college American Fiction courses?
After talking with a few college students in a local tavern this weekend, I thought I'd take a stroll through the land of college syllabi online and see what American Fiction authors are being read in colleges across the nation.
The answers surprised me somewhat. Colleges have varying requirements for what they consider American Fiction. While the majority are in the same camp I'm in, that American Fiction is fiction written from Colonial times to the present day by authors born in America, there were a few who contested that fact. They think any author spending the majority of their writing life in America counts. What do you think?
Some of the course reading list items from colleges across the country:
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
* Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina
* Jullia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone
Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek
Don DeLillo, Mao II
Louise Erdrich, Bingo Palace
Richard Ford, Independence Day
Charles Johnson, The Middle Passage
Toni Morrison, Jazz
Fae Ng, Bone
E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
Margaret Atwood, Death by Landscape
John Barth, Click
Kate Braverman, Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta
Charles Baxter, Gryphon
* Denotes an author I was surprised to see on an American Fiction syllabus.
This is by no means a complete list of all the syllabi contents, but instead a representative sampling. Write and tell me what you think!
Technorati Tag: American Fiction
