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MHS Library | English

Our Physical Collection

Racism

The House Behind the Ceders - Charles W Chesnutt

The House Behind the Cedars

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

Her Father's Daughter

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

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

The Colonel's Dream

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 

Jane Eyre...Villette

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

 

Jane Austen - Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice

Wuthering Heights...Pride and Prejudice

Henry Handel Richardson - The Getting of Wisdom

The Getting of Wisdom

Louisa May Alcott - Little Women

Little Women

Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden: Puffin Clothbound Classics

Lit Circles Handouts

This guide was created by

Suzannah Hawtin

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