there are so many wonderful books out there. It can be overwhelming, especially when you’re an English learner and you can’t help but want to read every book. Well, we surveyed the English department and now we have the results! Check out the list below of 15 books every English learner should read according to WSU English teachers.
1. rhetoric recovered by janet atwill
“rather than an invitation to further research, the book hopes that new students of rhetoric will engage in the reconstruction of value and advantage from multicultural perspectives as part of a central pedagogical goal. after finishing the book, readers are expected to consider rhetorical research and pedagogy in the light of “techné” (its underlying definition of rhetoric and composition studies) as a productive art.
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near the conclusion of reclaimed reclaimed atwill states: “to reconfigure rhetorical studies as an art of intervention and invention is to create a very different classroom. when the focus of instruction is intervention in specific rhetorical contexts, students and teachers alike must grapple with the material realities of gender and access…what is at stake for teachers is less the transmission of specific material than the renegotiation of the students’ own symbols. capital’ (210).”
– jared grogan, full professor
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“if you are going to read a Russian classic, this is the one; it has something for everyone.”
– tuinstra hunter, gta
3. narration of the life of frederick douglass by frederick douglass
“combination of history, literary form and feeling. furthermore, it is influential in countless subsequent works of American literature.”
– kelly polasek, grandmother
4. the invisible man by ralph ellison
“rational, honest, comprehensive, thoroughly engaging, and brilliantly written novel about persistent problems in American life and culture, and the persistent people who live in and confront them.”
– renata wasserman, professor emerita
5. a theory of adaptation by linda hutcheon
“I like that hutcheon approaches adaptation as both a product and a process, and that it thinks beyond film and literature to look at amusement parks, opera, dance, video games, all sorts of things that our students can study and study. furthermore, I am a great admirer of anything that makes us think outside our usual frames (for me that is cinema, but for others it may be literature or composition or science or whatever) and that encourages us to work in an interdisciplinary way.”
– chera kee, associate professor
6. portrait of a lady by henry james
“It’s an amazing milestone in English literature from an earlier era, making it impossible not to peruse.”
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– renee c. hoogland, teacher
7. herman melville’s moby dick
“because melville’s novel is really such a swampy, soggy, squitchy [novel], enough to distract a nervous [English specialist]. yet [there is] a kind of indefinite, half-reached, unimaginable sublimity that almost freezes you, until you involuntarily [take] an oath to yourself to find out what that wondrous [book] means. every once in a while a brilliant but, alas, misleading idea will launch [you] through.—is [a poetic precursor to jazz or a meditation on indeterminacy].—is [a satirical critique of imperialism and a mythopoetic allegory about race in the prewar American imagination in the form of an apocalyptic quest]—is [a queer, modernist, proto-ecological, gender-swapping novel/essay that was somehow written in the mid-19th century by a lapsed or at least dubious Calvinist] .—is [the leading example of nineteenth-century American literary cosmopolitanism]. —it’s a [watery crystal ball in which the whole of American history is glimpsed written by a humorous prophet who seems to have swallowed all shakespeare, milton, a bunch of scientific papers on whales, the bible and a dictionary.]’ in summary , it’s a mind-altering good time.”
– donovan hohn, associate professor
8. paradise lost by john milton
“Milton’s Paradise Lost is perhaps the greatest single poem ever written in English, a sprawling epic that attempts to explain the human condition by meditating on the story of the fall. Milton’s characterizations of Satan, Adam, Eve, and God are unforgettable and challenging, and his poem has exerted a great influence on later poets such as the Romantics.”
– jaime goodrich, associate professor
9. loved by toni morrison
“good, important, influential, widely studied.”
– matthew wilkens, associate professor
10. ariel (the restored version) by sylvia plath
“plath explores the injustices of the world from a female point of view, offering deep insights into motherhood, poetics, marriage, and mental health.”
– jaime goodrich, associate professor
11. mumbo jumbo by ishmael reed
“It’s a great example and commentary on the rhetoric of racism.”
– suzette bristol, instructor
12. shakespeare’s village
“1. No writer evokes the human situation as imaginatively, powerfully, or insightfully as Shakespeare.
2. Hamlet’s text invites the full range of theoretical approaches to discover the complexities of being human.
3. Freud confesses that he envied Shakespeare because he was the first to reveal the forces that shape the human being.
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4. no other writer throws more people from different cultures around the world into states of fear and awe
5. At last count, I have at least 25,000 reasons.”
– richard raspa, teacher
“generally considered shakespeare’s greatest play, [harold] bloom makes a strong case that it gives us a means of imagining ourselves.”
– shawn cooper, part-time instructor
13. why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? and other conversations about race by beverly daniel tatum
“Encountering, engaging, and expanding conversations about race and racial tensions, especially in the academic world, is something all students should do. English learners in particular would benefit from thinking about race in relation to our lived experience, as we also question racism in literature, creative writing, and composition.”
– nicole guinot varty, full professor
14. on earth we are briefly beautiful by ocean vuong
“the book’s attention to language, themes and content reflect the current moment, the opportunity for analysis and interpretation, discussions of craft, structure, etc. hopefully, it will become a foundational work in a new literary canon that includes the voices of minority writers. .”
– professor ben wielechowski, part-time instructor
15. three guineas for virginia woolf
“This remarkable work of creative non-fiction from one of the most influential writers of the modern era grapples with the ethics of representation, with the ways in which gender ideology shapes our lives, and with the conflicting needs to defend the innocent and cultivate peace. (all of which are interrelated, as woolf shows). Originally published in 1938, on the eve of World War II, it has an eerie resonance with our times.”
– anonymous
And there you have it, 15 books every English learner should read. happy reading!
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