ENGL 101 Enhanced Book Club Titles for Fall 2020
*Blue ISBN-13# is a live link to Amazon if you want to order it directly.
*Book Club starts the week of 14 September 202o.
*It doesn't matter what edition of the book you use.
Tommy Orange. There, There. Vintage; Reprint edition (May 7, 2019)
ISBN-13: 978-0525436140 Paperback
The novel follows twelve characters from Indigenous communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to each other in ways they may not yet realize. There is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and working to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, who is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death, has come to work at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil has come to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. There There is at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, utterly contemporary and always unforgettable.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. Anchor; Reprint Edition (January 30, 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-0345804327 Paperback
Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Whitehead's conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation.
Laila, Lalami. The Other Americans Vintage; Reprint edition (March 17, 2020)
ISBN-13: 978-0525436034 Paperback
Late one night, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As the characters tell their stories, connections among them emerge. The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.
Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Press; First Edition (June 4, 2019)
ISBN-13: 978-0525562023 Hardcover.
When Little Dog is in his late twenties, he writes a letter to his mother who will not be able to read it. The letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
Atwood, Margaret. The Testaments. Anchor (September 1, 2020)
ISBN-13: 978-0525562627 Paperback
More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With The Testaments, Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.
ISBN-13: 978-0525436140 Paperback
The novel follows twelve characters from Indigenous communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to each other in ways they may not yet realize. There is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and working to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, who is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death, has come to work at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil has come to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. There There is at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, utterly contemporary and always unforgettable.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. Anchor; Reprint Edition (January 30, 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-0345804327 Paperback
Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Whitehead's conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation.
Laila, Lalami. The Other Americans Vintage; Reprint edition (March 17, 2020)
ISBN-13: 978-0525436034 Paperback
Late one night, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As the characters tell their stories, connections among them emerge. The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.
Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Press; First Edition (June 4, 2019)
ISBN-13: 978-0525562023 Hardcover.
When Little Dog is in his late twenties, he writes a letter to his mother who will not be able to read it. The letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
Atwood, Margaret. The Testaments. Anchor (September 1, 2020)
ISBN-13: 978-0525562627 Paperback
More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With The Testaments, Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.