Books that Feature the Theme of Masculinity

Susan Eloise Hinton was born in 1948 and lives in Oklahoma, where most of her novels are set. She wrote her first novel, The Outsiders, while still in high school. It was published in 1967 and earned Hinton her reputation as a pioneer of the young adult genre. The work “grew out of her dissatisfaction with the way teen-age life was being portrayed in the books she read” (Michaud, Jon. “S.E. Hinton and the Y.A... Read Rumble Fish Summary

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Scorpions is a young adult, coming-of-age novel written by best-selling children’s author Walter Dean Myers. Like many of Myers’s works, the book is based on his experience of growing up in New York City’s historically African American Harlem neighborhood. Exploring themes of brotherhood and masculinity, love and loyalty, race, class, and curtailed opportunity, the narrative follows 12-year-old Jamal Hicks as he is confronted with a life-changing dilemma: whether or not to step into the shoes... Read Scorpions Summary

Seven Guitars, which premiered in 1995 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and transferred to Broadway in 1996, is the seventh play in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle. This series, consisting of ten plays that are each set in a different decade of the 20th century, explore the lives of African Americans during each era. With the exclusion Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), which takes place in 1920s Chicago... Read Seven Guitars Summary

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a chivalric romance of unknown authorship. Written sometime in the late-14th century, the work employs a complex metrical scheme that involves several lines of pentameter punctuated by a “bob and wheel”: a two-syllable “bob” followed by a rhyming quatrain of six-syllable lines. The bob and wheel structure is fairly typical of Middle English verse, as is the alliterative verse used throughout the sections written in pentameter. Its subject... Read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Summary

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“Soldier’s Home” is a short story first published in Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 debut collection In Our Time. The version discussed in this guide is from The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (Scribner, 2003).The story’s protagonist is Harold Krebs, a young man who returns home to Oklahoma after serving in World War I. It is one of many works by Hemingway, a WWI survivor, to show the impacts of the war... Read Soldier's Home Summary

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Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) is American author Ken Kesey’s second novel. The plot revolves around the Stampers, a family of independent loggers who choose to continue working in opposition to a logging union’s dispute with company leadership. The novel uses an experimental structure, switching between first-person and omniscient narrators and telling the story from the perspectives of multiple characters. Kesey and his counterculture group, the “Merry Pranksters,” were the precursors to the hippies of... Read Sometimes a Great Notion Summary

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Theresa Rebeck’s provocative feminist two-act drama Spike Heels, first produced in 1990, is a problem play, that is a drama that looks at cultural, social, and economic issues. Problem plays intended to participate in the cultural conversation have a long and significant history in the theater. Playwrights like the Ancient Greek Euripides, 19th century Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw (whose presence looms large in Spike Heels), and a wide number of contemporary playwrights have... Read Spike Heels Summary

“Spunk” is a short story by Zora Neale Hurston published in 1925. Set in the rural Southern United States, “Spunk” follows the conflict that ensues when one man pursues another man’s wife. The story’s publication helped establish Hurston as a significant literary voice during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1989, George C. Wolfe adapted the story, along with content from two others by Hurston, into a play by the same name. Citations in this guide correspond... Read Spunk Summary

Steppenwolf, originally published in German in 1927, then translated into English in 1929, is the eighth novel published by Swiss German novelist Hermann Hesse. The novel was commercially successful upon publication, and it remains a popular novel to the present day. However, Hesse remarked that whereas his intention was to find humor in life and resist despair, Steppenwolf has often been misunderstood as a glorification of suffering. Much of Hesse’s body of work addresses spiritual... Read Steppenwolf Summary

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Ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote the Symposium around 385 BCE. One of Plato’s best-known and most important works, the Symposium is a philosophical dialogue that explores the nature and virtues of Love (Eros) through seven speeches delivered at a symposium in 416 BCE. The Symposium is considered fiction, though the setting and characters are based on historical fact: For example, Socrates features in the dialogue, but Plato gives him a fictional speech. Plato is one... Read Symposium Summary

“Ten Indians” by American author Ernest Hemingway was first published in his second short story collection, Men Without Women (1927). The story follows Nick Adams, a recurring protagonist in Hemingway’s work who shares traits and backstory with the author. These stories, including “Ten Indians,” were later collected in the anthology The Nick Adams Stories.The title references an 1864 children’s rhyming and counting song, “Ten Little Indians,” composed by Septimus Winner. It was subsequently adapted as... Read Ten Indians Summary

Tenth of December: Stories (2013) is American author George Saunders’s fourth short story collection. Saunders is widely regarded as one of the modern masters of the short story form, and this collection features stories written between 1995 and 2012, some of which were previously published in various literary outlets. The book was a bestseller and was widely praised on release, winning both the Story Prize and the Folio Prize. This guide refers to the 2013... Read Tenth of December Summary

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a young adult novel by Sherman Alexie, published in 2007 with art by Ellen Forney. Alexie, a Spokane/Cour d’Alene Indian (a term he prefers to “Native American”), began the book as a memoir inspired by experiences he had growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, and attending the predominantly white Reardan High School in Reardan, Washington. The book received much praise and many... Read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Summary