English 487 - Recommended Reading


One of the greatest challenges in teaching is not what to include on a syllabus, but what to leave off.

This is a list of works that pertain to issues at play in the course, and all of them are, for various reasons, strongly recommended as further reading. Some of them are on the syllabus; most aren't.

One note: In one of his undergraduate lectures, Joseph Campbell provided students with a list of recommended reading. Upon seeing the length of the list, a rather brave young woman raised her hand. "Professor Campbell, you can't really be asking us to read all of these this semester." "My dear," said the esteemed if somewhat old-fashioned Campbell, "this isn't a reading list for the semester. It's a reading list for life." Without going quite that far, I offer the following list in a similar (if less overdetermined) spirit.

Gender, Space, and Home: Postmodern Women’s Writings of the Americas

Relatively recent fiction and creative non-fiction:

Allende, Isabel The House of the Spirits
Allison, Dorothy Bastard out of Carolina, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (non-fiction)
Appignanesi, Lisa A Good Woman (British author)
Atwood, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, Dancing Girls and Other Stories
Bloom, Amy Love Invents Us
Bradley, Marion Zimmer The Mists of Avalon
Campion, Jane The Piano (screenplay, film)
Chao, Patricia The Monkey King
Chute, Carolyn The Beans of Egypt, Maine
Cisneros, Sandra The House on Mango Street
Coomer, Joe Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God (male author, but it fits the paradigm)
Dening, Alison Hawthorne Temporary Homelands
Dillard, Annie Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood
Ehrlich, Gretel The Solace of Open Spaces, Islands, the Universe, Home (non-fiction); Heart Mountain (fiction)
Erdrich, Louise The Beet Queen, Tracks, Love Medicine (fiction), The Blue Jay’s Dance (non-fiction)
Esquivel, Laura Like Water for Chocolate, The Law of Love (including CD)
Fitch, Janet White Oleander
Flagg, Fannie Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Gibbons, Kaye A Virtuous Woman
Goldberg, Natalie Long, Quiet Highway
Kaysen, Susanna Girl Interrupted
Kincaid, Jamaica Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara High Tide in Tucson (non-fiction), The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, Animal Dreams
Kumin, Maxine Women, Animals & Vegetables, Selected Poetry
Lamott, Anne Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions (non-fiction), Rosie (fiction)
LeGuin, Ursula Sea Road, Always Coming Home
Lorde, Audre The Black Unicorn
Minot, Susan Monkeys
Morrison, Toni Beloved (fiction), Playing the Dark (non-fiction)
Munro, Alice Lives of Girls and Women
Norris, Kathleen The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (non-fiction)
Oates, Joyce Carol Selected Short Stories, We Were the Mulvaneys
Otto, Whitney How to Make an American Quilt
Proulx, E. Annie The Shipping News
Reynolds, Sheri The Rapture of Canaan
Robinson, Marilynne Housekeeping
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony, Almanac of the Dead
Simpson, Mona Anywhere but Here, The Lost Father
Smiley, Jane Ordinary Love and Good Will, A Thousand Acres
Steedman, Carolyn Kay Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (non-fiction)
Tan, Amy The Joy Luck Club
Wells, Rebecca The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel, Little Altars Everywhere
Williams, Terry Tempest An Unspoken Hunger, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (non-fiction)

Selected less recent fiction and creative non-fiction (~1940-1970)

Angelou, Maya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Cather, Willa My Antonia (1910s)
Jackson, Shirley The Haunting of Hill House (1959), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Life Among the Savages (non-fiction)
McCullers, Carson The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1939), The Member of the Wedding (1946)
Mitchell, Margaret Gone with the Wind
O’Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything that Rises Must Converge
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte The Yellow Wall-Paper (1890s), Herland (early 1900s)
Lessing, Doris The Summer Before the Dark
Stein, Gertrude Three Lives, Melanctha, (fiction); Paris, France (1940), Wars I Have Seen (1945) (non-fiction)
Toklas, Alice B. The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
Welty, Eudora Delta Wedding

Selected relevant fiction and creative non-fiction by male authors

Abbey, Edward (anything)
Dorrit, Michael Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Kidder, Tracy House (non-fiction)
Guterson, David Snow Falling on Cedars
Least Heat Moon Blue Highways (non-fiction)
Pollan, Michael A Place of My Own (non-fiction)

Historical Texts with Direct Bearing

Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Woolf, Virginia A Room of One’s Own
De Beauvoir, Simone The Second Sex
Friedan, Betty The Feminine Mystique

Relevant/Related Texts

Berlant, Lauren The Queen of America Goes to Washington City
Hiss, Tony The Experience of Place
Pindell, Terry A Good Place to Live - America’s Last Migration
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman’s Life
Hanson, Pratt, eds. Gender, Work, and Space
Gillis, John R. A World of Their Own Making (historical)
Keith, Pile, eds. Place and the Politics of Identity
Gottdiener, M. The Social Production of Urban Space
Cage, John Silence
Benade, Arthur, H. Fundamentals of Music Acoustics
Foucault, Michel Introduction to the History of Sexuality
Bhabha, Homi The Location of Culture (selections)
Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities
Feld & Basso Senses of Place
Soja, Edward Postmodern Geographies (selections)
Turner, Frederick Spirit of Place: The Making of an American Literary Landscape
Warren Ecological Feminist Philosophies

and, of course, Cynthia Huff's new book.

On Soundscape Music Composition (Note: this is my own particular quirky interest which I'd love to discuss!)

Cage, John Silence (text), 4' 33", (musical composition)
Benade, Arthur, H. Fundamentals of Music Acoustics
Lucier, Alvin I Am Sitting In A Room (1970) (musical composition)
A good introductory web site on the subject
McCartney, Andra. "’Creating Worlds For My Music to Exist’: How Women Composers of Electroacoustic Music Make Place For Their Voices." Master’s thesis, York University Graduate Programme in Music, 1994. (by the woman who wrote the above web site)