if you want to succeed…you must be prepared to read!

English Literature AS: The Struggle for Identity in Modern Literature

If you want to succeed…you must be prepared to

READ! You will never have ‘finished’ all of your work for English Literature…as there is always something more that you can do. Make effective use of your spare study time by focusing on your wider reading. The more you read, the better equipped you shall be for the exams next summer. You will need to give examples from your wider reading in the following three genres:

Prose Drama Poetry

So…make careful notes as you read!

When reading, it is always useful to ask yourself these three questions:

1. What is the text about? 2. How has the writer presented

this subject matter? 3. Why have they chosen to

present it in this way?

English Lit Notes

Prose Drama Poetry


The What is the easiest bit, so make sure that you do not focus solely on that question or you will simply be writing a summary. The second and third questions (How and Why) should make you think about the writer’s craft and this is really important. For the exam you need to be able to comment on the writers’ use of form, structure and language—so, as you read, think carefully about the decisions that have been made in the composition of these texts. Organise your notes carefully! You should identify links between different texts that share the same subject matter.

Key Areas of Struggle for Identity: - Gender - Ethnicity - Sexual Orientation - Religion - Cultural Diversity - Class - Discrimination - Alienation and Dislocation - Issues of Inequality caused by all or any of the above


PROSE FICTION Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) James Baldwin, Go Tell it On the Mountain (1953) Angela Carter, Wise Children (1991) Kiran Desai, Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard (1998) Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996) Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) Michael Frayn, Spies (2002) Nadine Gordimer, July’s People (1981) David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars (1994) Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1930) Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998) Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004) Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto (1998) Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (1996) Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) D.B.C. Pierre, Vernon God Little (2003) Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1997) J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting (1993) Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1984) Richard Wright, Native Son (1940) Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) Rose Tremain, The Road Home (2007) Kathryn Stockett, The Help (2009) Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982) PROSE NON-FICTION Autobiographies and Biography, Diaries Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (1999) Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom (1994) Memoirs and Interviews Bobby Sands, Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song (1982) Malcolm X, Malcolm X Talks to Young People (1965) Alice Walker, The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996)


History and cultural commentary, essays and speeches David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike (1987) Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970) Martin Luther King Jr., I Have A Dream: Writings And Speeches That Changed The World (1970) Amrit Wilson, Dreams, Questions, Struggles South Asian Women in Britain (2006) DRAMA Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953) Brendan Behan, The Hostage (1958) Jim Cartwright, Road (1986) Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine (1978) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls (1982) Claire Dowie, Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? (1996) Brian Friel, Translations (1980) Brian Friel, Making History (1989) Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959) Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis (2000) Tony Kushner, Angels in America (1992) Martin McDonagh, Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) Sean O’Casey, Three Dublin Plays: Juno & The Paycock (1924), The Plough & the Stars (1926), The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949) Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1952) Mark Ravenhill, Citizenship (2006) Ntozake Shange, Shange Plays 1- (Includes For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, 1975) Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (1975) Timberlake Wertenbaker, Our Country’s Good (1988) Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) POETRY Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise (1978) Simon Armitage, Dead Sea Poems (1995) W.H Auden, e.g ‘The Quarry’, ‘Funeral Blues’, ‘Refugee Blues’ + (1930s) Gillian Clarke, Letter From a Far Country (1985) Gillian Clarke, A Recipe for Water (2009) Carol Ann Duffy, The Other Country (1990) Carol Ann Duffy, The World’s Wife (1999) Carol Ann Duffy, Feminine Gospels (2002) Allan Ginsberg, Howl (1956) Thom Gunn, The Man With Night Sweats (1992) Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist (1966)


Langston Hughes, Collected Poems (1960) Jackie Kay, Life Mask (2005) Jackie Kay, Darling (2007) Liz Lochhead, Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems (1984) Liz Lockhead, The Colour of Black and White (2003) Agnes Meadows, Woman (2003) Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming to Dover! (2007) Grace Nichols, The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984) Grace Nichols, I Have Crossed an Ocean (2010) Alice Oswald, The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile (1996) Adrienne Rich, The School Among the Ruins (2004) Owen Sheers, Skirrid Hill (2005) Lemn Sissay, Morning Breaks in the Elevator (1999) Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (1914) Alice Walker, Revolutionary Petunias and other Poems (1970) Benjamin Zephaniah, Too Black, Too Strong (2001) TEXTS IN TRANSLATION Novels Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (1985) Alexandra Kollontai, Love of Worker Bees (1930) Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1986) Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) Poetry Pablo Neruda, Residence on Earth (1933) Drama Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and her Children (1939) Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding (1933) + The House of Bernarda Alba (1936) Non fiction Autobiography/diary/travelogue Anne Frank, The Diary of A Young Girl (1947) Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries (1952) Nawal al-Saadawi, Memoirs from the Women’s Prison (1984)

if you want to succeed…you must be prepared to read!

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