Pop over to PBS’s Channel Thirteen website for my recommendations on the new high school reading canon. Feel free to critique my list or offer a book you wish you were assigned in high school.
UPDATE: The link to PBS is dead. I’ve reposted the article below.
The New Canon
John Matthew Fox
Selecting reading materials for high school students requires a delicate balance between accessibility and quality. Students want accessible stories that deal with problems familiar to their high school experience, while their teachers demand that the stories must possess a high literary quality (or at least a pinch of quality).
I think this new proposed list of good books for the high school curriculum (an update from the 1993 top ten list) manages to strike that balance.
When composing this list I deliberately modified several characteristics from the older list:
- More female authors (Only one on the previous list!)
- More Multiculturally and Internationally focused, rather than solely Caucasian American.
- All written in the last thirty-five years, mostly in the ’80s and ’90s, rather than all dead authors with firmly canonized works.
- Only one play, and a screenplay at that. Though the old list contains four plays (all Shakespeare), their presence on the list seems to indicate more of a reverence for The Bard than an actual decision to focus on stage plays as a genre.
One characteristic of the old list worth keeping, however, was the even balance between younger protagonists and older protagonists. Cramming the list with high-school aged characters (or younger) will ultimately backfire on students’ education, because students not only need relatable characters to coax them into reading, but unfamiliar ones to enlarge their experiences.
There are several popular titles that I excluded from the list. “Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which some refer to as the “Catcher in the Rye” for the younger generation, may be excellent for extracurricular reading, but doesn’t reach the plateau of literature. The same applies to “Go Ask Alice,” an uncensored account of high school drug abuse and anorexia.
The titles on this list should not be taught exclusively, but integrated with more “classic” suggestions. But these books certainly are viable options for an updated canon of relevant literature.
1. “Breakfast of Champions” Kurt Vonnegut (1973)
Mix up an old science fiction writer with a car dealer, add in excerpts from a fictional book and sketches of an electric chair and the American flag, and you have the zany adventure of “Breakfast of Champions.” This postmodern parody satirizes American culture and eventually introduces the author as a character in his own book (Alternate Choice: Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”).
2. “Life of Pi” Yann Martel (2001)
After political turmoil in India causes Pi’s father’s to sell his zoo, he barters passage for his family aboard a ship to Canada. Unfortunately, the ship sinks, leaving Pi on a raft with a zebra and hyena, an Orangutan named Orange Juice, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The book’s rich content comes not only from its fabulist elements, but also from Pi’s exploration of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam.
3. “Beloved” Toni Morrison (1987)
In the 2006 New York Times poll of authors and critics, “Beloved” ranked as the most important novel of the last twenty-five years. (Second was Don DeLillo’s 827-page “Underworld,” so students should appreciate the comparatively slim “Beloved.”) Sethe and her daughter Denver have recently escaped from slavery, but Sethe is haunted by the ghost of her child “Beloved,” whom Sethe mercy-killed when the child was two. (Alternate Choice: Toni Morrison’s “Sula”)
4. “Lucy” Jamaica Kincaid (1990)
A young girl from the West Indies comes to America to work for a family in a large city. She resists British colonialism and an overbearing mother, but cannot resist her burgeoning adolescence, which leads to sexual explorations.
5. “Tortilla Curtain” T.C. Boyle (1995)
A middle-class couple lives in a suburban enclave next to the woods where an illegal immigrant couple squats. When the suburban husband accidentally hits the immigrant man while driving, the couples’ lives began to intertwine, leading to an examination of xenophobia and environmentalism.
6. “House on Mango Street” Sandra Cisneros (1984)
A coming-of-age novel composed of diary entries by the young Latina narrator Esperanza Cordero. Esperanza navigates the treacherous transition to adolescence, dealing with her own sexuality as well as the sexuality of her friend Sally (Alternate Choice: Julia Alvarez’s “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”).
7. “Blood Meridian” Cormac McCarthy (1985)
This might be one of the more challenging books on the list because of archaic language, atypical punctuation and frequent allusions, but students need some books that stretch them (besides, Shakespeare is equally difficult). McCarthy’s protagonist “The Kid” wanders through violent adventures in the American old west, scalping Indians, surviving betrayals, and fighting off his nemesis Judge Holden.
8. “Amadeus” Peter Shaffer (Screenplay) (1984)
Although we don’t want students to lose the connection with stageplays, it’s absolutely essential to teach them how to read screenplays. Students can explore the ambiguity behind Mozart’s death, and the moral dilemma of genius bestowed upon those who seemingly don’t deserve it.
9. “Interpreter of Maladies” Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)
This nine-story collection about Indians and Indian-Americans won the Pulitzer and vaulted Lahiri to critical acclaim and commercial success. As a collection, rather than a novel, its inclusion on this list highlights the importance of short story collections as a worthwhile genre for study. In the title story, an Indian-American family visits India with a tour guide, and must confront their homeland as foreigners rather than natives.
10. “A Handmaiden’s Tale” Margaret Atwood (1986)
In this dystopia that rivals Huxley’s “Brave New World,” the narrator who might or might not be named June is the concubine of Commander Fred in the Republic of Gilead. She must become pregnant in order to avoid being classified an Unwoman (an unfertile woman), and shipped off to the colonies. The novel explores gender hierarchies, the subjugation of women, and the indignities of a social system built upon castes.
If teachers wanted to be even more adventurous, they could also teach a graphic novel, such as “Persepolis,” (2003), which chronicles a young girl’s experience growing up during the Iranian revolution. Or try “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, (2003), about the childhood friendship between two Afghanistan boys. Or, for something even more recent, go for Sherman Alexie’s 2008 Young Adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” in which Junior flees the “rez” and his alcoholic father to attend a predominantly white private school.
Ultimately, though, these very recent books need to be limited. Although they propel students to read, they do not offer an education in common books shared by millions of other students, and do not give students the educational background needed for college-level literature courses.
But what do high school students, high school teachers, recent graduates and parents think about these suggestions? Offer insight or critiques about any of the above, or suggest additional books in the section below.
