theme book ideas
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Theme Book Ideas. Mr. Amaral. War Experience Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations Wild West and Wilderness Experience Baseball: All American Sport 1920’s Expatriate Generation Chicago Experience American Frontier/Social Protest Racial Tension and Identity Southern Issues - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Theme Book Ideas
Mr. Amaral
• War Experience• Women in Conflict with Society’s
Expectations• Wild West and Wilderness Experience
• Baseball: All American Sport• 1920’s Expatriate Generation
• Chicago Experience• American Frontier/Social Protest
• Racial Tension and Identity• Southern Issues
• Immigrant Experience• American Family
• America’s Role in the World
The War Experience
Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier
• Plot Background: wounded soldier decides to walk back home to the Blue Ridge Mts. of North Carolina and the woman he loves.
• Author Background: His first novel, taught and lives in North Carolina.
• Historical Setting: Civil War Era
Catch-22by Joseph Heller
• Plot Background: satirical war novel, World War II bombardier feigns insanity in order to get home
• Author Background: Heller served as a B-25 wing bombardier in World War II, flew sixty missions
• Historical Period: 1944, Final Months of World War II
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Plot Background: war novel, life of a soldier who survives the bombing of Dresden
• Author Background: Vonnegut served in the US Army from 1942-1945, was a POW, and received the Purple Heart
• Historical Period: 1945, Dresden, Germany, and imaginary planet Tralfadore
In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason
• Plot Background: daughter of man killed in Vietnam tries to link with her past
• Author Background: newspaper and magazine writer
• Historical Period: 1984, with flashbacks to the Vietnam War
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• Plot Background: short stories about soldiers in Vietnam
• Author Background: served in Vietnam
• Historical Period: Vietnam War
Going After Cacciatoby: Tim O’Brien
• Plot Background: A solider recounts what happened and what could have happened in Vietnam
• Author Background: O’Brien served in an Army combat unit during a tour of duty in Vietnam
• Historical Period: Vietnam 1969
Paco’s Storyby Larry Heinemann
• Plot Background: Vietnam Veteran returns to town looking for work and a sense of normalcy.
• Author Background: won the National Book Award in 1987
• Historical Period: post-Vietnam war
Ender’s Gameby Orson Scott Card
• Plot Background: young people train for alien military attack
• Author Background: science fiction writer known for his moral themes
• Historical Period: future
Cat’s Cradleby Kurt Vonnegut
• Plot Background: search for ice that freezes at room temperature
• Author Background: mixes science fiction and philosophy
• Historical Period: 1960’s
Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Plot Background: single woman in wealthy New York society
• Author Background: experienced New York affluence; received Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence in 1921
• Historical Period: early 1900’s
The Color Purpleby Alice Walker
• Plot Background: Georgia, Tennessee, Africa, 1920-40
• Author Background: Brought up in the rural South, won Pulitzer for this book
• Historical Background: The exploitation of women
The Feminine Mystique by Betty
Friedan
• Plot Background: women’s unhappiness in the 1960’s
• Author Background: feminist organizer, writer, and lecturer
• Historical Period: 1960’s
The Bell Jarby Sylvia Plath
Plot: Highly intelligent young woman struggles with career choices and her own mental stability in the Fifties.
Author: Autobiographical treatment of Plath’s very real personal battles.
Historical events: Conservative era with limited choices for women.
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen by Alix
Kates Shulman• Plot Background: memoirs of
a woman who feels trapped in her marriage and her life
• Author Background: feminist writer, her book was considered the "first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation movement."
• Historical Period: late 1960’s
The Optimist's Daughterby Eudora Welty
• Plot Background: Laurel visits her dying, but powerful Father and finds him married ‘to a coarse and shallow woman’, who is Laurel’s age.
• Author Background: Pulitzer Prize in 1973
• Historical Period: New Orleans, Mississippi Delta 1960’s
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret
Atwood• Plot Background: futuristic
story about women’s rights • Author Background:
prominent Canadian writer of many genres
• Historical Period: 22nd century (2195)
The Wild WestThe Wilderness Experience
Undaunted Courageby Stephen Ambrose
• Plot Background: focuses on the exploratory journey of Lewis and Clark.
• Author Background: author of several books about American History,
• Historical Setting: late 1700’s early 1800’s
The Oxbow Incidentby Arthur Van Tilburg Clark
• Setting: Nevada• Time Period: 1885• Theme: Three cattle
rustlers are lynched—just as word comes that they are innocent. Seen as the ‘struggle between democracy and totalitarianism’
Lonesome Doveby Larry McMurty
• Setting: Great Plains• Time Period: Late 19th C.• Theme: Adventures of
two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana; Pulitzer Prize winner
Bad LandBy Jonathan Raban
• Setting: Montana• Time Period: 1909.• Theme: Congress,
lobbied by the railroad, offered homesteaders 320-acres. An account of the hardships, myths, heroes, heroines and ruin of many immigrants.
O Pioneers!by Willa Cather
• Plot Background: Swedish immigrants tame the wild land, also, a love triangle in Nebraska
• Author Background: considered this her first novel, based on the memories of her youth.
• Historical Period: 1880’s immigration, role of women
A Lost Ladyby Willa Cather
• Plot Background: story told by a boy in a Midwestern town, who admires the gracious ways and manners of Marian Forrester
• Author Background: First ever woman to be voted into the Nebraska hall of fame
• Historical Background: the decline of the West, 1920’s
Baseball: the All-American Sport
The Naturalby Bernard Malamud
• Plot Background: a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era. Filled with magical realism
• Author Background: The Natural was his first of eight novels, taught at Bennington College in Vermont
• Historical Period: 1930’s and 1940’s rural vs. urban life
Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof
• Plot: 1919 fix of the World Series and its attempted cover-up
• “The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record” ~The Chicago Tribune
1920’s Expatriate GenerationEarly 20th Century
This Side of Paradiseby F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Plot Background: 1920’s, East coast and Princeton University
• Author Background: Novelist and screen writer who epitomized the Jazz Age
• Historical Background: Lost Generation, Jazz Age
The Sun Also Risesby Ernest Hemingway
• Plot Background: life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s
• Author Background: winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature
The Maltese Falconby Dashiell Hammett
• Plot Background: mystery set in the underworld of San Francisco
• Author Background: former Pinkerton detective; wrote for pulp fiction magazines
• Historical Background: 1928, prohibition, stock market crash
The Chicago Experience
Studs Loniganby James T. Farrell
• Plot Background: Chicago’s South Side, 1916-1930
• Author Background: Irish South-Sider who worked a wide variety of jobs
• Historical Background: End of World War I, Prohibition
The Coast of ChicagoBy Stuart Dybek
• Setting: Chicago• Time period: 1990’S &
2000’S• Theme: Long stories and
short ones. Some read like poetry. Life in neighborhoods everywhere
House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros• Setting: Chicago• Time Period: Mid-1960’s• Theme: A Chicana
feminist, Cisneros writes of growing up in Chicago’s Mexican- American neighborhoods. Deals with ethnicity and sexual identity.
American Social Protest
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
• Plot Background: California farm area, 1930’s
• Author Background: Fruit picker, journalist, screen writer, Nobel Prize winner
• Historical Period: Great Depression, rise of the American Communist Party
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Plot: Two young men travel across the country in search of thrills and adventure.
• Author: Autobiographical novel of Kerouac’s experiences in the late Forties.
• Historical events: McCarthyism, conformist culture in the Fifties when the book was published.
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
• Plot Background: The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after On the Road
• Author Background: concerns duality in Kerouac's life and ideals
• Historical Period: late 1950’s
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Testby Tom Wolfe
• Plot Background: Ken Kesey’s psychedelic road trip
• Author Background: known for “New Journalism” style
• Historical Period: 1960’s
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestby Ken Kesey
• Plot Background: revolution and power struggle set in a mental ward
• Author Background: volunteered for government LSD experiments & worked in a psychiatric ward
• Historical Period:1960’s
Less Than Zero and American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis• Historical Period: 1980’s • Plot Background: LA
college student experiments with drugs & alcohol (Less Than Zero).
• Plot: explore depths of insanity as a stockbroker by day tortures and murders at night (American Psycho).
• Author Background: wrote first book when he was 20.
The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin
• Plot Background: Dark Comedy about Joe Gallo, a New York City gangster.
• Author Background: awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1986); writer for several New York City newspapers
• Historical Period: Mafia crime, 1940’s – 1960’s
Racial Tension and Identity
African American
Native American
Asian American
Invisible Manby Ralph Ellison
• Plot Background: a young man finds new ways of dealing with race and identity
• Author Background: Ellison wrote about the unity of the the American experience beyond class, race and religion.
• Historical Period: 1940s and Early 1950s, Deep South and Harlem.
Uncle Tom’s Cabinby Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Plot Background: Kentucky and Louisiana, explores social and psychological problems with slavery and injustice.
• Author Background: appalled by slavery, she wrote this book as a response. Book sold more than 300,000 copies in 1852 when it was published.
• Historical Period: The South, late 1800’s
Native Son by Richard Wright
• Plot Background: Chicago, 1930’s
• Author Background: Moved North as a young man, first full-length novel
• Historical Period: Great Black Migration, rise of American Communist Party, Great Depression
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Plot Background: Eatonville and the Everglades, Florida, 1930’s
• Author Background: One of the foremost writers of the Harlem Renaissance
• Historical Background: Harlem Renaissance, establishment of “race colonies”, racial politics
Black Like Meby John Howard Griffin
• Plot Background: White writer passes as a black man in the South
• Author Background: Life changing experience for Griffin.
• Historical Period: 1959, racism
Black Boy by Richard Wright
• Plot Background: Mississippi, Arkansas, Chicago, 1912-1937
• Author Background: Grew up in a poor family, affiliated with Communist Party
• Historical Period: Era of strong racial prejudice, Jim Crow laws, Great Depression
The Bluest Eyeby Toni Morrison
• Plot Background: Told from five perspectives, focuses on an 11 year old girl who faces abuse and racism.
• Author Background: Toni Morrison’s first novel, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993
• Historical Period: American Midwest, Great Depression 1940’s
There are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz
• Plot Background: two brothers struggling to survive in Chicago’s public housing
• Author Background: Wall Street Journal reporter
• Historical Period: 1980’s
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Plot: murder of a Kansas farm family; investigation and trial
• Author Background: Capote is credited with “inventing” the true crime narrative
• Historical Period: 1959
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
by Sherman Alexie
• Contemporary life on the Spokane Indian reservation, through 22 linked stories
• Basis for the film Smoke Signals
House Made of Dawnby N. Scott Momaday
• Plot Background: Native American World War II vet returns to the reservation
• Author Background: Member of the Kiowa Nation, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for this work
The Joy Luck Clubby Amy Tan
• Plot Background: Chinese mothers and American daughters struggle for understanding
• Author Background: Chinese-American, writes about the clash of cultures and generations
Snow Falling on Cedarsby David Guterson
• Plot Background: memories of internment camp on an isolated island.
• Author Background: former high school teacher and journalist
• Historical Period: 1940’s, flashbacks from 1991 to 1945.
The Immigrant Experience
Woman Warrior & China Men by Maxine
Hong Kingston• Plot Background: growing up
in a Chinese-American family• Author Background: Chinese-
American teacher and college professor
• Historical Period: written in 1976; stories occur 1924-1975
The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
• Contrast between a family of illegal immigrants and a middle-class suburban family
• Poses questions about immigration, unemployment, discrimination and social responsibility
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
• Plot Background: story told by a young immigrant Jewish boy dealing with slum life in New York City
• Author Background: published in 1934, Roth was an immigrant himself, lived in similar slums.
• Historical Setting: New York, Immigrant Jewish life 1911 -1913
When Heaven and Earth
Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip
• Non-fiction: A Vietnamese woman grows up during the Vietnam War
• Focuses on the individual’s emotional and physical outcomes caused by the war
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
by Julia Alvarez• Fifteen
interconnected stories about a Dominican-American family’s struggles with assimilation
• Four sisters and their parents look back on their struggles to adjust to America
Lost in Translationby Eve Hoffman
• Setting: Poland and Vancouver
• Time Period: 1950s+• Theme: Story of a young
girl, who immigrated from Poland, learned a new language and culture, and shares what that experience means.
Southern Issues
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• Plot Background: Georgia cotton mill town, 1930’s
• Author Background: First novel at age 23, a focus on the “grotesque”
• Historical Period: Condition of young women and Blacks in the Great Depression, growth of radio
A Streetcar Named Desire [and a second play] by Tennessee Williams
• Setting: New Orleans • Time Period: 1940’s• Theme: Dysfunctional
family; Blanche DuBois, despite her poverty and lack of morals, tries to live in a gentile fashion
All the King’s Menby Robert Penn Warren
• Plot Background: 1930’s, an unnamed Southern state
• Author Background: Novelist, poet, scholar, university professor
• Historical Background: the Great Depression, political corruption in the South
The American Family
Ragtimeby E. L. Doctorow
• Plot Background: stories of “average” New York families woven with celebrities (Houdini, Freud, etc.)
• Author Background: born in New York; English professor at New York University
• Historical Period: early 1900’s (but written in 1974)
All My Sons and Death of a Salesman**
by Arthur Miller• Author Background: Miller’s
dramas explore the issues that afflict humanity in post-WWII America
• Historical Period: 1940s, after World War II
• Plot Background: An aging business man discovers how his actions have affected his family
**Or another play like The Crucible
Franny and Zooeyby J.D. Salinger
• Plot Background: two distinct and related stories about the Glass siblings
• Author Background: originally published in The New Yorker magazine.
• Historical Background: teen angst late 50’s early 60’s
Nine Storiesby J.D. Salinger
• Plot Background: A collection of short stories
• Author Background: Includes his most famous stories “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” + “For Esme with Love and Squalor”
• Historical Background: late 1940’s – early 1950’s
The Housebreaker of Shady Hills by John Cheever
• Plot Background: Collection of short stories focusing on the suburb of Shady Hill
• Author Background: Cheever won the Pulitzer Prize for The Stories of John Cheever, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award
• Historical Background: late 50’s early 60’s
Rabbit, Runby John Updike
• Plot Background: 3 months in the life of a 26-year-old former high school basketball player and his attempts to escape the constraints of his life.
• Author Background: Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest
• Historical Background: late 50’s early 60’s
We Were the MulvaneysJoyce Carol Oates
• Plot Background: “ideal” family begins to fall apart after a traumatic event.
• Author Background: has published a book a year since the 1960’s
• Historical Period: 1970’s
Empire Fallsby Richard Russo
• Plot Background: Explores life in a small, blue collar Maine town, where the mill and textile industries have closed, leaving behind the people and their stories.
• Author Background: lives in Maine; winner of Puiltzer Prize
• Historical Background: present day
America’s Role in the World
The Plot Against Americaby Philip Roth
• Plot Background: alternate history in which FDR is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh
• Author Background: winner of National Book Award in 1960 for Goodbye, Columbus
• Historical Background: 1940
The Manchurian Candidateby Richard Condon
• Plot: A former P.O.W. is brainwashed and programmed to kill a presidential nominee
• Set during the Cold War (late 1940’s)
• A true thriller with intrigue, suspense, and humor
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
• Plot Background: New York City’s social and ethnic divisions, told through the downfall of a wealthy bond salesman
• Author Background: former reporter credited with creating the “New Journalism” style
• Historical Period: 1980’s
Primary Colors: A Novel of Politicsby Anonymous/Joe Klein
• Plot Background: The study of a presidential campaign, fictionalization of Bill Clinton’s run for the White House.
• Author Background: Washington D.C. journalist, writer for Time Magazine
• Historical Background: 1992 presidential campaign
• War Experience• Women in Conflict with Society’s
Expectations• Wild West and Wilderness Experience
• Baseball: All American Sport• 1920’s Expatriate Generation
• Chicago Experience• American Frontier/Social Protest
• Racial Tension and Identity• Southern Issues
• Immigrant Experience• American Family
• America’s Role in the World