Required Summer Reading

Jefferson Parish Public School System

Magnet Schools

English III (Honors)

Directions: You MUST read at least three books from the list below. Each of your three chosen books must come from a different category: fiction, non-fiction, and drama.

Fiction

The Awakening—Kate Chopin

Published in 1899, Chopin’s novel about Edna Pontellier--an upper class New Orleans woman who finds housekeeping tedious, her husband boring, and her children a burden--caused such an uproar that its author was ostracized by polite Creole society. Chopin’s novel lay forgotten until the middle of the twentieth century when it was re-discovered by college English professors who saw it as an American parallel to Flaubert’s French masterpiece, Madame Bovary.

Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neal Hurston Hurston

A novel which focuses on a journey of self-discovery made by Janie Starks, an African-American woman living in Florida from 1920-1935. In a sense, the novel is told “backwards.” In the first chapter, Janie has returned home; the following chapters relate the events leading up to her return. Their Eyes Were Watching is written in the dialect of African-Americans living in Florida during the early twentieth century. The novel stresses the different ways men and women respond to life, especially in their dreams.

Tortilla Flat—John Steinbeck

Steinbeck’s novel tells the story of Danny who inherits two houses in the early twentieth century and shares them with his friends in Tortilla Flat, an impoverished area near Monterey, California. Many of the novel’s characters are memorably depicted, especially the child-like Pirate, the ingenious Pablo, the kind Jesus Maria, and the sharp Pilon.

Cold Mountain—Charles Frazier

A Civil War soldier and a lonely woman embark on parallel journeys of danger and discovery. Environment, events, and the empathy of others transform the protagonists spiritually as well as physically.

Monkey Bridge—Lan Cao

The unmapped territory of the Vietnamese immigrant experience is examined in this tale of a young girl's coming-of-age in the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

My Antonia—Willa Cather

An unconventional novel of prairie life, "My Á ntonia" tells the story of a remarkable woman whose strength and passion epitomize the pioneer spirit.

Secret Life of Bees—Sue Monk Kidd

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Beestells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.

Non-fiction

My Bondage and My Freedom—Frederick Douglass

By detailing his own humiliating experiences as an American slave, Douglass reveals the atrocities of human bondage in one of American literature’s greatest works of non-fiction. Douglass’s lucid style, his selection of powerful details, and his insights into the corrosive nature of slavery are all components of this African-American’s rise from an imposed degradation to a self-determined national hero. Douglass’s memoirs are essential reading for anyone interested in effective writing, American history, and human rights.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings—Maya Angelou

In this book, Angelou tells her own powerful story about growing up in Arkansas in the 1930s and California in the 1940s; it’s a story the reader will never forget, as Angelou sees for herself the deadly dangers of a racist South. Although this book can be disturbing at times, it is ultimately a story of one woman’s triumph over nearly impossible odds.

The Devil’s Highway—Luis Urrea

So many illegal immigrants die in the desert Southwest of the U.S. that only notorious catastrophes make headlines. Urrea reconstructs one such incident in the Sonoran Desert, the ordeal of sun and thirst of two dozen men in May 2001, half of whom suffered excruciating deaths.

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes—Maya Angelou

Angelou continues the candid chronicle of her life in this fifth volume of her autobiography which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Drama

Arsenic and Old Lace—Joseph Kesselring

After Mortimer Bruster marries, he returns to tell his two elderly aunts the good news. But Mortimer is in for a bit of a shock. His aunts, Abby and Martha Bruster, have a new hobby: they murder old men and call it “charity” work. Although the story might appear gruesome, the whole play is very amusing and has entertained audiences for many years.

The Glass Menagerie—Tennessee Williams

This intense drama focuses on a son’s need to achieve independence from a passive/aggressive, self-absorbed mother and a handicapped daughter’s retreat into a beautiful world populated by glass figurines. Amanda, the play’s embittered mother, and Laura, its emotionally traumatized young heroine, have become two of American drama’s most widely recognized characters.