Am. Fic. at the College Level

After talking with a few college students in a local tavern this weekend, I thought I'd take a stroll through the land of college syllabi online and see what American Fiction authors are being read in colleges across the nation.

The answers surprised me somewhat. Colleges have varying requirements for what they consider American Fiction. While the majority are in the same camp I'm in, that American Fiction is fiction written from Colonial times to the present day by authors born in America, there were a few who contested that fact. They think any author spending the majority of their writing life in America counts. What do you think?

Some of the course reading list items from colleges across the country:

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer

The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

* Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina

* Jullia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy

Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek

Don DeLillo, Mao II

Louise Erdrich, Bingo Palace

Richard Ford, Independence Day

Charles Johnson, The Middle Passage

Toni Morrison, Jazz

Fae Ng, Bone

E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Margaret Atwood, Death by Landscape

John Barth, Click

Kate Braverman, Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta

Charles Baxter, Gryphon

* Denotes an author I was surprised to see on an American Fiction syllabus.

This is by no means a complete list of all the syllabi contents, but instead a representative sampling. Write and tell me what you think!

Technorati Tag: American Fiction

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