"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking its stupid." ~Einstein

AP Literature Course Syllabus 2019-2020

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AP ​Required Readings

Summer Reading
  • ​Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
  • Kindred by Octavia Butler 

Summer Reading Assignment

Fall Semester
  • ​Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates
  • ​The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  • Native Son by Richard Wright
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Spring Semester
  • ​​Go Tell It on a Mountain by James Baldwin
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • Night at the Fiestas: Stories by Kirstin Valdez Quade
  • ​Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • A Collection of Classic and Contemporary Prose/Drama
  • A Collection of Classic and Contemporary Poems
Winter Breaks and Spring Break Films
  • ​Fences by August Wilson
  • Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
  • A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry​
NOW READING!
Collection of Classic and Contemporary Prose/Drama*
  • Everyday Use by Alice Walker​
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • ​Just Walk on By: Black Men in Public Space by Brent Staples
  • A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
  • Truffles by Susan Glaspell
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien
  • A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
  • The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
  • Where is the Voice Coming From by Eudora Welty
Collection of Classic and Contemporary Poetry*
  • A Poison Tree by William Blake
  • Respiration by Mos Def
  • ​Mike Check by Suheir Hammad
  • The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Harlem Sweeties, Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
  • Son to Mother ​by Maya Angelou
  • If These Walls Could Talk by Kendrick Lamar
  • The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • The Harlem Dancer by Claude McKay
  • Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye
  • On the Subway by Sharon Olds
  • An Anthem by Sonia Sanchez
  • Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
  • White Man'z World by Tupac Shakur
  • Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
  • Sunflower Sonnet Number Two by June Jordan
  • Formation by Beyonce
  • Out, Out by Robert Frost
  • ​Ego Trippin', Love Is, Choices, Life Cycles, When I Die by Nikki Giovanni
  • A Barred Owl by Richard Wilbur
  • The History Teacher by Billy Collins
  • Youth's Progress by John Updike
  • Sonnet #5 by Seamus Heaney
  • Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
  • American Hero by Essex Hemphill
  • Ogun by E. K. Braithwaite​
Videos/TED Talks/Movie Clips
  • ​We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Why Some of us Don't Have One True Calling by Emilie Wapnick
  • The Danger of the Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Required Supplemental Texts

  • How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Dr. Thomas C. Foster
  • Perrine's Sound & Sense: An Introduction to Poetry*
  • ​Goldilocks and the Three Bears by the British Council*
  • ​​The Holy Bible, King James Version**

**Note: I have included the Bible to our required texts because Western literature commonly draws upon knowledge from the Bible that is not familiar to everyone. The King James version is considered highly poetic which will sync with our focus on the stories that are frequently alluded to in such diverse literature as listed above. We will not be reading various selections in terms of faith but rather in terms of analyzing literature.
*Excerpts will be provided