Readings Archive

See your specific course for reading assignments this semester, but use the following links if you have any difficulties finding a reading in Eagle Online or if you just want to browse readings I've also used in the past. Many of these are generally available online if the link doesn't work, but do notify me if it does not. 

Essays & Non-Fiction
Gloria Anzaldua, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"; alternative link
James Baldwin, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” ; "Stranger in the Village" 
Judy Brady, “I Want a Wife”
Charles M. Blow, "Smoke and Horrors"
Lera Boroditzky, “Lost in Translation” (Alternative Link)
Paul F. Campos, "White Economic Privilege is Alive and Well" (2017)
Siri Carpenter, "Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain" (Scientific American, 2008)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, reading from Between the World and Me
W.E.B. Du Bois, "The 'Veil' of Self-Consciousness" 
Barbara Ehrenreich, "Cultural Baggage"
Lars Eighner, "On Dumpster Diving"
John Eligon, "No 'Foreign' Names for Children Dear Abby Advised. Furious Parents Replied." (2018) (PDF)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"
Frederick Douglass, "Learning to Read and Write"
Marzieh Ghiasi, "A Case for Torture?"
Zora Neale Hurston, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"
Pico Iyer, "Living in the Transit Lounge"
Jeff Jacoby, "Who's White? Who's Hispanic? Who Cares?"
Gregory Jay, "Who Invented White People?"
Robert Jensen, “White Privilege Shapes the U.S.” (see additional essays by Jensen)
Robert Jensen "Masculine, Feminine, Human?" 
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail & "Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen"
Jhumpa Lahiri, "My Two Lives"
Michael Levin, "The Case for Torture"
Eric Liu, "Notes of a Native Speaker"
Barry Lopez, "The American Geographies" ;  "A Literature of Place"
Miranda Warning (What police are required to say about one's rights when arrested)
Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
Manuel Muñoz, "Leave Your Name at the Border"
Bharati Mukherjee, "American Dreamer" (1997)
Barack Obama, "Origins" (Excerpt from Dreams from My Father)
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” ; Politics and the English Language
Plato, The Republic (Books VI and VII)
Katha Pollitt, “Why Boys Don’t Play With Dolls”
Leonard Pitts, Jr., "Tired of Having to Explain Ourselves"
Richard Rodriguez, “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”
Larry Rosen, "Driven to Distraction"
Susan Saulny, "Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above"
Chief Seattle, Speech (1854) 
Kevin Sowinski, "Y’all Want Some Clam Chowda?: An Analysis of the Effect of the Perception of Southern and Northern U.S. Accents"
Brent Staples, "Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space" (No link available--see original assignment)
Jonthan Swift, "A Modest Proposal" 
Deborah Tannen, "Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard For Men and Women to Talk With Each Other?" ; "Who Does the Talking Here?" ; "Marked Women, Unmarked Men"
Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For"
Mary Waters, "Optional Ethnicities: For Whites Only?"
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "Decolonizing the Mind"
Kenji Yoshino, "The Pressure to Cover"
Raffaella Zanuttini, "Our Language Prejudices Don't Make No Sense"

Short Stories, Fiction & Poetry
Kim Addonizio, “What Do Women Want?”
Sherman Alexie, "Every Little Hurricane"
Maya Angelou, “Africa”; "Caged Bird"
Margaret Atwood, "Happy Endings" 
Donald Barthelme, "Some of Us Have Been Threatening Our Friend Colby"; "The First Thing the Baby Did Wrong"
Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour"
Sandra Cisneros, "Barbie-Q"
Lucille Clifton, "Homage to my Hips"
Dagoberto Gilb, "Look on the Bright Side"; "Me Macho, You Jane"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Terrance Hayes, "American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin"
Langston Hughes, "I, Too, Sing America"; "Dream Deferred"; "Let America Be America Again"
Marlon James, excerpt from A Brief History of Seven Killings
Jamaica Kincaid,“Girl”
Ursula Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"
Rick Moody, "Boys"
Viet Than Nguyen, "Fatherland"; see Nguyen's homepage for links to more stories
Mary Oliver, "Singapore"
Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried" (No link available--see original assignment)
Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue”
William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow"
E. B. White, "Once More to the Lake"

Video & Online Reading/Viewing/Listening
"America's Best Truck" (Chevy truck print ad)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "The Danger of a Single Story" (Ted Talk, 18:43mins)
David Byrne, "How Architecture Helped Music Evolve" (TED Talk, 16 mins)
"Coca-Cola/America" print ad (date unknown)
Coolio, "Gangsta's Paradise" (1995)
Run-DMC, "Raising Hell" (1986)
"Do You Speak American?" (PBS.org, American accents and dialects)
"500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art" (YouTube)
Jeff Foxworthy, "Southern Accents" (Games Rednecks Play)
Elizabeth Lev, "The Unheard Story of the Sistine Chapel"(Ted Talk, 12:30 mins.)
Titus Kaphar, "Can Art Amend History? (TED Talk, 12:52 mins.)
Gil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (1970)
Levis' O Pioneers (Go Forth) Commercial
What Kind of Asian Are You? (YouTube)