Contemporary Fiction Core List Required Primary Texts: 1. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) 2. James Baldwin: “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) & Another Country (1962) 3. Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street (1984) 4. Don DeLillo: White Noise (1985) 5. Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man (1952) 6. Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying (1993) 7. Joseph Heller: Catch 22 (1961) 8. Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior (1976) 9. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987) 10. Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried (1990) 11. Flannery O’Connor—stories: “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” “Good Country People” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” “Everything That Rises Must Converge” “A Late Encounter With the Enemy” “The Displaced Person” “The Lame Shall Enter First” “The Comforts of Home” “A Stroke of Good Fortune” “Parker’s Back” 12. Ishmael Reed: Mumbo Jumbo (1972) 13. Philip Roth: American Pastoral (1997) 14. Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony (1977) 15. Alice Walker: The Color Purple (1982) EXPANDED PRIMARY CORE (BOLD = REQUIRED CORE 15; SELECT 5 OTHER TEXTS/TEXT- GROUPINGS TO COMPLETE PRIMARY CORE LIST OF 20) 1. Julia Alvarez: How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) 2. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) 3. James Baldwin: “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) & Another Country (1962) 4. Toni Cade Bambara: Gorilla, My Love (stories, 1972) or The Salt Eaters (novel, 1980) 5. John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse (stories, 1968) or The Sot-Weed Factor (novel, 1960) 6. Saul Bellow: Herzog (1964) 7. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1951) 8. Octavia Butler: Bloodchild (stories, 1995) or Kindred (novel, 1979) 9. Raymond Carver—stories: “Errand” “A Small Good Thing” (and “The Bath”) “Cathedral” “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” “Where I’m Calling From” “Popular Mechanics” “So Much Water So Close To Home” “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” “Popular Mechanics” “Vitamins” and “Neighbors” 10. John Cheever—stories: “Goodbye, My Brother” “The Enormous Radio” “The Season of Divorce” “O Youth and Beauty!” “The Five-Forty-Eight” “The Country Husband” “The Swimmer” “Reunion” “The Sorrows of Gin” “Christmas Is A Sad Season For the Poor” 11. Frank Chin: The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. (1988) 12. Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street (1984) 13. Michael Cunningham: The Hours (1998) 14. Don DeLillo: White Noise (1985) 15. Junot Diaz: Drown (stories, 1996) or The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (novel, 2007) 16. Joan Didion: Play It As It Lays (1970) 17. E.L. Doctorow: Ragtime (1975) 18. Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man (1952) 19. Louise Erdrich: Tracks (1988) 20. Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying (1993) 21. Joseph Heller: Catch 22 (1961) 22. Oscar Hijuelos: The Mambo Kings Play Song of Love (1989) 23. Shirley Jackson: The Lottery (stories, 1949) or The Haunting of Hill House (novel, 1959) 24. Denis Johnson: Jesus’ Son (1992) or Tree of Smoke (2007) 25. Edward P. Jones: Lost in the City (stories, 1993) or The Known World (novel, 2003) 26. Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1957) 27. Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) 28. Jerzy Kosiński: The Painted Bird (1965) 29. Jamaica Kincaid: At the Bottom of the River (stories, 1983) or Annie John (novel, 1985) 30. Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior (1976) 31. Chang-Rae Lee: Native Speaker (1995) 32. Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) 33. David Leavitt: The Lost Language of Cranes (1986) 34. Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian (1985) 35. Carson McCullers: The Ballad of the Sad Café (novella & stories, 1951) or The Member of the Wedding (novel, 1961) 36. James Alan McPherson: Elbow Room (1977) 37. N. Scott Momaday: House Made of Dawn (1968) 38. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987) 39. Alice Munro: The Beggar Maid (1978) 40. Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (1955) 41. Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried (1990) 42. Flannery O’Connor—stories: “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” “Good Country People” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” “Everything That Rises Must Converge” “A Late Encounter With the Enemy” “The Displaced Person” “The Lame Shall Enter First” “The Comforts of Home” “A Stroke of Good Fortune” “Parker’s Back” 43. Tillie Olsen: Tell Me A Riddle (1961) 44. Cynthia Ozick: The Shawl (1989) 45. Grace Paley: Enormous Changes At The Last Minute (1974) 46. Walker Percy: The Moviegoer (1961) 47. Ann Petry: The Street (1946) 48. Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (1963) 49. Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) 50. Ishmael Reed: Mumbo Jumbo (1972) 51. Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping (1981) 52. Philip Roth: American Pastoral (1997) 53. JD Salinger: Catcher in the Rye (novel, 1951) or Nine Stories (stories, 1953) 54. Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony (1977) 55. Susan Sontag: “The Way We Live Now” (story, 1986) & In America (novel, 1999) 56. Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose (1971) 57. William Styron: The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) 58. John Updike: Rabbit, Run (1960) 59. Alice Walker: The Color Purple (1982) 60. David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (1996) 61. Eudora Welty: The Optimist’s Daughter (novel, 1972) or select stories, including: “Why I Live At The P.O.,” “Petrified Man,” “The Worn Path,” and “Where Is The Voice Coming From?” 62. John Edgar Wideman: Philadelphia Fire (1990) 63. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five (1969) 64. Hisaye Yamamoto: Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (1988) 65. Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road (1961) Required Secondary Texts: 1. Charles Baxter – Burning Down the House 2. Wayne Booth – The Rhetoric of Fiction 3. Janet Burroway – Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft 4. E.M. Forster – Aspects of the Novel 5. John Gardner – The Art of Fiction, On Moral Fiction, On Becoming a Novelist 6. David Lodge – The Art of Fiction 7. Vladimir Nabokov – Lectures on Literature 8. Flannery O’Connor – Mystery and Manners 9. Jane Smiley – 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel 10. James Wood – How Fiction Works .