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11th Grade Summer Assignment

Welcome to American Literature! This summer assignment is meant to keep your reading and writing skills fresh. You should choose carefully—select books that will be interesting and enjoyable for you.

Any assingments that do not follow directions exactly will not be accepted.

This assignment is due MONDAY, AUGUST 18TH, BETWEEN OF 9 AM AND 5 PM. You must deliver it yourself to the DSST: GVR High School front office and hand it to Ms. Frank or another member of the English Department.

Directions: For your summer assignment, please choose two of the following books to read, one from each list.

Fiction Choices Nonfiction Choices Sophie’s Choice by A Polish Holocaust A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind. A black student from survivor immigrates to , has a tempestuous love one of the worst high schools in DC goes to Brown. affair and battles her demons. *Difficult* The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls A memoire of Growing Catch 22 by Joseph Heller The satirical story of a WWII up poor with mentally ill parents soldier who thinks everyone is trying to kill him and hatches In Cold Blood by In a small Southern town, plot after plot to keep from having to fly planes again. a family is randomly, brutally murdered. This book Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison The story of an investigates the lives of the killers and the victims. abusive Southern childhood. The Omnivore’s DIllemma by Michael Pollan A shocking by Edward P. Jones The story of a black, look at the food industry. slave owning family. Outliers / Blink / The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway A young Fascinating statistical studies of everyday phenomena. American anti-fascist guerilla in the Spanish civil war falls in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies by love with a complex woman. Jared Diamond Why do some societies fail while others Sula by The intersecting lives of two black succeed? The reasons are not what you think! women in a small Ohio town The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston by Pearl S. Buck The story of a family in turn- There is an outbreak of ebola virus in an American lab, and of-the-century China. other stories of germs in modern society *warning: graphic by A male and gross descriptions of diarrhea* comes to terms with having been raised as a girl. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A History of Four Meals by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Michael Pollan The author explores the ethical, Chabon The complicated, intertwined lives of two comic- environmental, and political factors that dictate the book writing cousins in . unhealthy, earth-offending diet of modern Americans. Play Songs of Love by The Survival of the Sickest The surprising links between story of Cuban musician brothers in New York in the 1930s.— disease, evolution, and longevity. warning: contains graphic sex Devil in the White City by Erik Larson The story of a serial Stones from the River Ursula K. LeGuin The life of a dwarf killer at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. woman in Germany The Emperor of all Maladies Siddhartha Mukherjee The Never Let Me Go. Kashuo Ishiguro. In a dystopian future, history of cancer. children are part of an experiment in education for those Continued Nonfiction Choices grown to be organ donors. Just Mercy Bryan Stevenson. A powerful true story Redeployment. Phil Klay. A collection of short stories about about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion deployment and the struggles of soldiers to return to civilian call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. life.

Continued Fiction Choices Continued Nonfiction Choices by Alex Haley (—based on a true The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Elizabeth story) The origins of the author’s family are traced from Kolbert. Over the last half-billion years, there have been five Africa to America. mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly . . An explosion, a theft, a child and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are adrift in the adult world. This Pulizer-Prize winning is currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the an incredible coming of age story. most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact Me Before You. Jojo Moyes Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close is us. family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny Fire Shut Up In My Bones Charles Blow. This poetic and village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master powerful memoir from New York Times columnist Charlies of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after Blow takes us through his life, from an impoverished an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, childhood in Louisiana to a fraternity house to adulthood, as extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is. he learns what it is to become a man and comes to terms The Book of Unknown Americans. Christina Henriquez. with the abuse he suffered as a child. After their daughter Maribel suffers a near-fatal accident, the “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Riveras leave México and come to America. But upon settling at Cafeteria?” Dr. Beverly Tatum. Essays on education, race, Redwood Apartments, a two-story cinderblock complex just off and socialization by Professor Tatum, former president of a highway in Delaware, they discover that Maribel's recovery-- Spellman College. the piece of the on which they've pinned all Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. their hopes--will not be easy. Gustavo Arrellano. Written by Denver-based columnist Jhumpa Luhiri. Fictional stories of Gustavo Arellano, this novel traces the spread of world’s Indian families in the United States. best cuisine (Mexican) into white mainstream America, and the cultural implications of tacos and burritos. Prep Curtis Sittenfeld. A girl from a small, lower-middle class family earns a scholarship to a prestigious boarding high Hunger of Memory. Richard Rodriguez. A memoir that school, where she struggles with her identity in a the world explores Richard Rodríguez’s coming-of-age in an America of the 1%’s female teenagers. that challenges him to understand what it is to be a Americanah Chimamanda Adiechi. A story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who Mexican American and what it is to be a Catholic in face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come America. to call home. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives. Suzanne Oboler or Latino? Mexican American or Chicano? Social labels often take on a life of their own beyond the control of those who coin them or to whom they are applied. In Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives, Suzanne Oboler explores the history and current use of the label “Hispanic,” as she illustrates the complex meanings that ethnicity has acquired in shaping our lives and identities.

Overview

 Your journals and essay are due by 5pm MONDAY, AUGUST 17TH , NOT THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. You may turn your assignment in from between 9am and 5 pm. Assignments turned in on the first day on school will be marked late. How to turn in your assignment: 1. Go to the main DSST:GVR HS Building and walk to the front desk. Hand your essays to the member of the English Department behind the desk accepting assignments. 2. The member of the English Dept. will check your name off the class roster and have you sign beside your name. 3. The member of the English department will give you a receipt indicating the time you turned your assignment in and who accepted it from you. Keep this receipt as your proof that you’ve completed your assignment. 4. Any assignments turned in on the first day of school (August 25th) will be marked late and receive a 20% deduction in credit. Any student who does not complete a summer assignment will be issued a zero and required to make the grade up in Saturday School. 5. You will write 2 essays; one for your fiction choice and one for your nonfiction choice.

Fiction Assignment

Prompts (choose 1)

a. Analyze how the main character changes over the course of the novel. Use evidence from the novel to compare and contrast the character’s beliefs, personality, and priorities over the course of the novel. b. Analyze the author’s purpose of the novel. What techniques does the author use to convey this purpose throughout the novel? c. Analyze a motif in the novel. What does this technique reveal about the novel’s larger theme?

This essay should include an introduction, a thesis statement, full formal analysis body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This must be a minimum of three full pages.

Non-fiction

Prompts (choose 1)

a. How do the knowledge and facts in this book contrast with previous ideas on the subject? Explain how understanding of this subject matter has grown / evolved over time. b. What mistakes were made by people in regards to this subject matter? What were the repercussions of those mistakes? c. What inequalities or social justics problems are revealed in this novel?

This essay should include an introduction, a thesis statement, full formal analysis body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This must be a minimum of three full pages.