American Classics
A diverse selection of classic fiction titles by American authors. (Updated March 2021)
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The Good Earth
In the first of a trilogy, a peasant agrarian Chinese family struggles amidst natural disasters and socio-political strife.
Format: Book
Availability: No Longer Available
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Kindred
Dana, a Black woman, finds herself constantly shot back and forth between her modern time of 1976 in LA and pre-civil war times in Maryland, eventually meeting an ancestor.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The House on Mango Street
Young Latina Esperanza Cordero describes her neighborhood, family, and life growing up in Chicago.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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American Psycho
High powered, Manhattan-based investment broker Patrick Bateman is a sociopath and a psychopath, as he's as dangerous as he is unreliable.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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A Lesson Before Dying
Set in Bayonne, LA (a fictional community Gaines has used previously) in the late 1940s, main character Grant Wiggins visits Jefferson, who is on death row for a crime he was unwittingly involved in.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Jonah's Gourd Vine
John Buddy Pearson, a popular pastor at Zion Hope on the weekends, loves women more than what's good for him during the week.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Janie Crawford, a sassy and self-confident African- American woman of the 1930s, lives life on her own terms and goes through three marriages, one murder trial and more joy and pain than many who judge her.
Format: Book
Availability: No Longer Available
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The Autobiography of An Ex-colored Man
The first fictional memoir written by a Black man is told through the eyes of Johnson, a biracial man, who is being forced to choose between honoring his Black heritage or passing as a white man in the post-Reconstruction era of the U.S.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
McMurphy, a newcomer to the psychiatric hospital, leads his fellow patients on to a series of major socio-psychological victories against the head of the nursing staff- aptly called Big Nurse.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Namesake
An immigrant experience story following the Ganguli family from Calcutta to Boston, and their journey becoming Americans.
Format: Book
Availability: No Longer Available