English & U.S. History Paper11th Grade

2011

LATE 20TH CENTURY & MOST MODERNISM (1970 – 2000)

“Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke has returned from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial

development. Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur

Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis,

M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power-taking on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the

highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening the

natural habitat.”

•Historical Connections: Environmental movement

EDWARD ABBEYTHE MONKEY WRENCH GANG

“An account of the author's existence, observations and

reflections, as a seasonal park ranger in southeast Utah.”

•Historical Connections: Environmental movement,

National Parks development

EDWARD ABBEYDESERT SOLITAIRE: A SEASON IN THE WILDERNESS

“In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo

landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars,

he returned home-- physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever

gone.”

•Historical Connections: Vietnam War

PHILIP CAPUTOA RUMOR OF WAR

“The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of

Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes

heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in

Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become.”

•Historical Connections: Hispanic experience in America

SANDRA CISNEROSTHE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET

“This collection contains Bob Dylan's lyrics, from his first

album, Bob Dylan, to 2001's "Love and Theft.””

Historical Connections: Social issues

BOB DYLANLYRICS: 1962-2001

“Multigenerational saga of two extended families who live on

and around a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota.”

•Historical Connections: Contemporary Native American

experience

LOUISE ERDRICHLOVE MEDICINE

“As her husband's health deteriorates, Enid faces the disappointments in her life including her three grown

children.”

•Historical Connections: Changing American dream, 1990s, Disintegration of the

family

JONATHAN FRANZENTHE CORRECTIONS

“This is a novel in the guise of the  tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has  lived 110 years, who has been both a slave

and a  witness to the black militancy of the 1960's.”

•Historical Connections: African American experience

ERNEST GAINESTHE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN

“A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach

visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.”

•Historical Connections: Povery among African Americans

ERNEST GAINESA LESSON BEFORE DYING

“This novel, about an 11-year-old-girl who, after the death of

her mother, summons the strength to escape from her

abusive father.”

•Historical Connections: Foster care & adoption issues in

America

KAYE GIBBONSELLEN FOSTER

“At a moonlit Indian ruin-where "thieves of time" ravage sacred

ground in the name of profit-a noted anthropologist vanishes while on the verge of making a startling, history-

altering discovery. At an ancient burial site, amid stolen goods and

desecrated bones, two corpses are discovered, shot by bullets fitting the gun of the missing scientist.There are modern mysteries buried in despoiled ancient places. And as blood flows all too freely, Navajo Tribal Policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee must plunge

into the past to unearth an astonishing truth and a cold-hearted

killer.”

•Historical Connections: Contemporary Native Americans

TONY HILLERMANA THIEF OF TIME

“A terrifying and unforgettable story of what happens in

Meany's life as a result of hitting a foul ball that kills his best

friend's mother.” 1950s into Vietnam era.”

•Historical Connections 1950s into 1960s America

JOHN IRVINGA PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY

“Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time

drunk, a man trying to make peace with the ghosts of his

past and present.”

•Historical Connections: Great Depression

WILLIAM KENNEDYIRONWEED

“In "The Secret Life of Bees," she explores a young girl's

search for the truth about her mother; her courage to tear

down racial barriers; and her joy as she claims her place within a

community of women.”

•Historical Connections: Civil Rights South

SUE MONK KIDDTHE SECRET LIFE OF BEES

“A fiercely honest autobiography of growing up

Chinese-American in California chronicles Kingston's struggle to

balance the “ghosts'' of her Chinese tradition with her new

American values.”

•Historical Connections: Asian American experience

MAXINE HONG KINGSTONTHE WOMAN WARRIOR: MEMOIRS OF A GIRLHOOD AMONG GHOSTS

“In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.”

•Historical Connections: Mental illness in America, 1990s

WALLY LAMBSHE’S COME UNDONE

“A cattle drive from Texas to Montana captures the history of the American West in truly epic

fashion. The author takes almost every hoary tradition of the

nineteenth-century western--i.e., the good-hearted scarlet lady, friendly and unfriendly Indians, strong-backed frontier folk--and

gives each one new life and vitality.”

•Historical Connections: Western life

LARRY MCMURTRYLONESOME DOVE

“The story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can

devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that

she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that

her world will be different.”

•Historical Connections: Struggle of African American women

TONI MORRISONTHE BLUEST EYE

“ It chronicles the communal strength of seven diverse black

women who live in decaying rented houses on a walled-off

street of an urban neighborhood.”

•Historical Connections: Struggle of African American women

GLORIA NAYLORTHE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE

“It all began when Kelly Kelleher was introduced to The Senator, a man she had wanted to meet since selecting him as the topic

of her senior honors thesis. Charmed and infatuated, Kelly

eagerly accepts his invitation to leave the island party where they've met and ride back to Boothbay Harbor together on

the late night ferry.”

•Historical Connections: Violence in American life

JOYCE CAROL OATESBLACK WATER

“A series of stories about the Vietnam experience, based on

the author's recollections. O'Brien begins by sharing the talismans and treasures his select small band of young soldiers carry into battle.”

•Historical Connections: Vietnam War

TIM O’BRIENTHE THINGS THEY CARRIED

“Thirty years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and

moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He

is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters

from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the

peace that was taken from him.”

•Historical Connections: Post World War II veterans, Native

American experience

LESLIE MARMON SILKOCEREMONY

“In 1949 four Chinese women - drawn together by the shadow of their past - begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum,

and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club.

Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died. When

her daughter comes to take her place, she learns of her mother's lifelong wish, and the tragic way

in which it has come true.”

•Historical Connections: Asian immigration, Asian American

women experiences

AMY TANTHE JOY LUCK CLUB

“Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20

years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being

abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of

her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her

abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from

her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of

love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.”

•Historical Connections: Racism

ALICE WALKERTHE COLOR PURPLE

TOM WOLFETHE RIGHT STUFF

“Wolfe's 1979 volume chronicled the handful of

adrenaline-junkie military test pilots who became the Mercury

astronauts. Their story is juxtaposed against that of

Chuck Yeager, the ace of aces pilot who broke the sound

barrier but couldn't apply to the space program because he

lacked a college degree. Wolfe also provides insight into the political motivations for the

space race and the paranoia of the Cold War.”

•Historical Connections: New Journalism, Space race, Cold

War

“In this unforgettable memoir of boyhood in the 1950s, we meet the

young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and

ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother,

Toby and his mother are constantly on the move. Between themselves they

develop an almost telepathic trust that sees them through their wanderings

from Florida to a small town in Washington State. Fighting for identity

and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, Toby's growing up is at once poignant and

comical. His various schemes--running away to Alaska, forging cheeks, and

stealing cars--lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of

possibility.”

•Historical Connections: 1950s American life

TOBIAS WOLFFTHIS BOY’S LIFE: A MEMOIR