Our Physical Collection
Racism
The House Behind the Ceders - Charles W Chesnutt
An early masterwork among American literary treatments of miscegenation, Chesnutt’s story is of two young African Americans who decide to pass for white in order to claim their share of the American dream.
Her Father's Daughter - Gene Stratton Porter
Stratton-Porter was an American feminist, environmentalist, photographer and one of Indiana's most famous female authors. Many of her writings were moralistic and romantic novels. This particular novel tells the story of two orphaned sisters (who it later turns out are not really sisters), dealing with race and discrimination they face.
Our Nig - Harriet Wilson
Our Nig is the tale of a mixed-race girl, Frado, abandoned by her white mother after the death of the child's black father. Frado becomes the servant of the Bellmonts, a lower-middle-class white family in the free North, while slavery is still legal in the South, and suffers numerous abuses in their household. Frado's story is a tragic one; having left the Bellmonts, she eventually marries a black fugitive slave, who later abandons her.
The Colonel's Dream - Charles W Chesnutt
In this provocative novel of reconstruction and race, a Civil War veteran tries to create a new utopia in his Southern hometown after gaining enlightenment and riches in the North.
Female Authors
Some of my favourites, in no particular order...
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre, Villette
...
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Jane Austen - Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice
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Henry Handel Richardson - The Getting of Wisdom
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden
Lit Circles Handouts
This guide was created by
Suzannah Hawtin
