10th Grade

Spring Moon

Chinese culture and traditions are well known, on the basis of modern writing, for their originality and peculiarity. The book Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord offers a rigorous explanation of this kind of lifestyle through the story of a Chinese...

College

Blink

Piercing screams, angry chants, and heartfelt tears: that is the climate of change. Compare this to the placid clicking of keyboards, the casual transmission of emoticons; it is evident which situation will go down in history. This is Malcolm...

College

Alice in Wonderland

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll tells the story of a young girl's journey through a world of fantasy, imagination, and inner transformation. Alice begins as a seven-year-old girl who falls down a...

10th Grade

The Kite Runner

774 million adults around the world are illiterate. In many places, people are not provided the opportunity to get education. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Amir is lucky enough to learn how to read and write, while many people in his...

College

Native Son

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, exemplifies classic, African-American literature that raises serious questions about how deeply racial oppression damages Blacks. Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism exposes how racism subjects Blacks to the...

College

Pi

The American Dream: An idea that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative (OED). Anyone willing to put in the work can achieve their dreams, but what if...

College

The Way to Wealth

One of Benjamin Franklin’s most memorable aphorisms in The Way to Wealth is the phrase “There are no gains, without pains” (2). This phrase has entered the American lexicon and become an established aphorism that represents the American work ethic...

College

Candide

The theme of love is omnipresent in literature; no matter what nook or cranny you search in a library, it is there. However, this theme conveys more than just kisses, heartbreak, and rampant sexual tension. It describes a culture through their...

College

Charles Simic: Poetry

Charles Simic’s poetry specializes in illustrating the profound within the mundane. Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1938 (Ford). He is of Serbian descent. Naturally, his early life was dominated by the Nazi period. While of much Simic’s...