To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Hello my lovely readers! Re-reading this as an adult made me fall in love with this book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into ten languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Clotel, or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown

Hello my lovely readers! I was inspired to read this book after I read Junie. I was looking for a more authentic telling of life in the 1800s and I had this book on my shelf. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

 

Hello my lovely readers!

This was a re-read and it is as good as I remembered it. I first read this in high school for my AP English class, but that was the first and last time. When I was in college, we read a lot of Kate Chopin in my English 1101 course, but I can't believe it took me this long to re-read The Awakening. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

I would give up the essential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.

Twenty-eight year old Edna Pontellier is a wife and mother spending the summer on Creole Isle with her husband and two young sons. While she's here, she meets Robert Lebron and the two take a liking to each other.

However, as feelings begin to grow deep, Robert leaves to Mexico for several months on a business trip. Her husband returns to New Orleans and the boys are send to their grandparents and Edna begins to experience her awakening. Edna starts to shun what's expected of her as a woman in society and live freely. 

Edna resists authority in her quest for freedom in a book that is now regarded as a landmark in American fiction.