Sul Ross State University
A Member of the Texas State University System

Reading List for M.A. Exam

American Literature

1. Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack
2. Washington Irving: "Rip Van Winkle,""The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, "The American Scholar,""The Divinity School Address"
4. Henry David Thoreau: Walden, "Civil Disobedience"
5. Edgar Allan Poe: "The Fall of the House of Usher,""The Purloined Letter"
6. Nathanial Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
7. Herman Melville: "Bartleby the Scrivener,""Billy Budd"
8. Walt Whitman: "Song of Myself,""Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,""When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
9. Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
10. Emily Dickinson: "I taste a liquor never brewed--,""Some keep the Sabbath going to Church--,""I heard a Fly buzz—when I died--,""I like to see it lap the Miles--"
11. Kate Chopin: The Awakening
12. Henry James: Daisy Miller, "The Beast in the Jungle,"Portrait of a Lady
13. Stephen Crane: "The Open Boat,""The Blue Hotel"
14. Mary Austin: Land of Little Rain
15. Willa Cather: My Antonia
16. Susan Glaspell: Trifles
17. Robert Frost: "The Road Not Taken,""Birches,""Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,""Mending Wall"
18. Eugene O'Neill: A Long Day's Journey into Night
19. T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
20. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
21. William Faulkner: Light in August, "A Rose for Emily,""Barn Burning"
22. Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
23. Langston Hughes: "Harlem,""Theme for English B"
24. John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
25. Richard Wright: Native Son
26. Eudora Welty: Delta Wedding, "Why I Live at the P.O.,""A Worn Path"
27. Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire
28. Tillie Olsen: "I Stand Here Ironing"
29. Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
30. Flannery O'Connor: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find,""Everything That Rises Must Converge"
31. Lorraine Hansbury: A Raisin in the Sun
32. Sylvia Plath: "Ariel,""Daddy,""Edge,""Lady Lazarus,""Metaphors"
33. John Updike: "A & P"
34. Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian
35. N. Scott Momaday: The Way to Rainy Mountain
36. Rodolfo Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima
37. Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior
38. Bobbie Ann Mason: "Shiloh "
39. Alice Walker: The Color Purple, "Everyday Use,""Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self"
40. Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
41. Tim O'Brien: "The Things They Carried"
42. Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony
43. Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street