American Literature

This guide is based on the electronic version of Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” available at the University of Virginia’s Mules and Men website. The original essay was published in the May 1928 edition ofThe World Tomorrow. Hurston’s essay is her explanation of how she experiences being African-American.Hurston opens the essay with the comment that she is “a Negro” and unlike many African-Americans claims no Native American ancestry. Prior to... Read How It Feels To Be Colored Me Summary

American Beat-era poet Allen Ginsberg began writing “Howl” as a private recollection for friends, though he later published the long poem in his 1956 book Howl and Other Poems. Also known as “Howl: For Carl Solomon,” the poem cemented Ginsberg’s status as a prophet-poet in the romantic literature vein of Walt Whitman and William Blake (two major influences). “Footnote for Howl,” written in 1955, is the final portion, though it’s not always included with the... Read Howl Summary

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If Beale Street Could Talk is a novel by James Baldwin (1924-1987), a critically acclaimed African American writer on matters of race and the African American experience. Originally published in 1974, the novel gained fresh attention with Barry Jenkins’ film adaptation in 2019. The novel is the love story of salesclerk Clementine “Tish” Rivers and budding sculptor Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt, African American natives of Harlem whose lives are derailed in the late 1960s to early... Read If Beale Street Could Talk Summary

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Chester Himes’s 1945 novel If He Hollers Let Him Go portrays the harsh truths of African American life in a racist society during the 1940s. The plot follows four days in the life of Robert “Bob” Jones, a young Black man working as a leaderman in a shipyard in Los Angeles during World War II. Bob narrates the novel in the first person, and the highly compressed, fast pace of the plot mimics the hard-boiled... Read If He Hollers Let Him Go Summary

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Imperium in Imperio (1899) is a historical-fiction novel by social activist Sutton E. Griggs. Imperium in Imperio explores the idea of a Black utopia, wherein Black Americans form a shadow government to seize control of the state of Texas and form their own nation. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the novel was sold door-to-door in Black communities and was largely unknown to the white population, ultimately garnering little notoriety upon its original publication. However... Read Imperium in Imperio Summary

“In Another Country” is a short story by Ernest Hemingway first published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1927. Hemingway was one of the most celebrated writers of his time and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His works include short stories and novels as well as journalism and non-fiction studies, such as Death in the Afternoon (1932), about bullfighting. This guide refers to the version of “In Another Country” reprinted in the 1938... Read In Another Country Summary

In Cold Blood is a nonfiction true crime novel published in 1966 by the American author Truman Capote. First published a year earlier as a serial in The New Yorker, In Cold Blood tells a broadly true account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Scholars consider the book one of the earliest and most successful examples of the nonfiction novel, a genre that combines journalistic reportage with techniques typically associated... Read In Cold Blood Summary

In Country, published in 1985, is Bobbie Ann Mason's debut novel. The story takes place in Hopewell, Kentucky, in 1984, 10 years after the end of US involvement in Vietnam. Mason grew up on a dairy farm outside Mayfield, Kentucky, and is thus well-acquainted with the rural South and its people. The classic coming-of-age story follows protagonist Samantha Hughes (known as Sam) as she seeks to discover the truth about her father and his death... Read In Country Summary

In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd is Ana Menéndez’s 2001 collection of eleven linked short stories, largely set in Miami, which revolve around the experiences of Cuban immigrants and their American-born children. The New York Times named the collection a Notable Book of the Year, and the title story was awarded the Pushcart Prize for short fiction. The collection includes a diverse mix of realistic fiction, magical realism, and allegory; it explores themes of... Read In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd Summary

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One of his several short stories set in Northern Michigan, “Indian Camp” by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was first published in a 1924 issue of the Parisian literary magazine Transatlantic Review. The next year, “Indian Camp” was included in Hemingway’s first story collection, In Our Time. “Indian Camp” has since become one of Hemingway’s most heavily anthologized works. Based partly on Hemingway’s visits to Petoskey, Michigan, during childhood and young adulthood, “Indian Camp” follows young Nick... Read Indian Camp Summary

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