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The Legend of Good Women is a long poem about women who were faithful in love. It comprises a prologue and nine short stories, the last of which is unfinished. The prologue is the best-known portion of the poem, and apparently also Chaucer’s...

John Milton was born on December 9, 1608. Milton's father was a scrivener and, perhaps more importantly, a devout Puritan, who had been disinherited by his Roman Catholic family when he turned Protestant. In April 1625, just after the accession of...

Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith was first published in July 2003. The text follows two parallel storylines: the founding and development of the early Mormon church in the nineteenth century, and...

"Tableau" is a poem by American writer Countee Cullen describing an interracial romance between two men. Originally published in 1925, the poem appeared in Cullen's first poetry collection, Color. Cullen was born in 1903, supposedly in Louisville,...

"From the Dark Tower" is a poem by American author Countee Cullen detailing the struggle of Black individuals to receive recognition for their work. Originally published in 1927, the poem appeared in Cullen's second collection, Copper Sun. Cullen...

Countee Cullen (1903 – 1946) was an American poet, primarily known as one of the most celebrated figures of the Harlem Renaissance. His work is recognized for its formal versatility as well as its thoughtful examination of race in America. Cullen...

“Yet Do I Marvel” was published in Countee Cullen’s first and most famous poetry collection, Color (1925). At the time, he was just twenty-two years old. Alongside “Heritage” and “Incident,” this poem is one of Cullen's best-known. As a perfectly...

Natasha Trethewey (1966-) is one of the most celebrated contemporary American poets of the last twenty years. Her poetry is recognized for its formal inventiveness and deep explorations of the legacy of race and prejudice in American history. She...

"Saturday's Child" is a poem by American writer Countee Cullen about economic and racial inequality. Originally published in 1925, the poem appeared in Cullen's first collection, Color. Cullen claimed to be born in Louisville, Kentucky, though...

Another Country is a novel by noted American author James Baldwin, first published in 1962 by Dial Press. It took Baldwin over thirteen years to write, and he finished it in Istanbul on a trip he had taken to break out of his creative stalemate.

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All American Boys is a young-adult novel, co-written by American authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely and published in 2015. They were motivated to write the book after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri by a white police officer...

E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is a young-adult novel about Cadence Sinclair Eastman, a privileged teenager whose carefree summers at her grandfather's private island are disrupted by a traumatic accident she can't recall. After returning to the...

“Truth” is a short poem by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Often referred to as the father of English literature, Chaucer is best known today for The Canterbury Tales, a sequence of tales told by pilgrims fleeing the plague. However, during his...

“Prayer Before Birth” is a poem written by Irish poet Louis MacNeice in 1944, published as the first poem in his collection Springboard. In the poem, MacNeice expresses concerns about the ongoing conflict of World War II. "Prayer Before Birth"...

Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian author, diplomat, and journalist best known for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. He is often considered the father of "magical realism," a literary device that infuses...

“A Country Doctor” was initially published in its original German in Franz Kafka’s collection of stories Ein Landartz: Kleine Erzählungen in 1919. An English translation first appeared in the 1945 in the volume The Country Doctor: A Collection of...

Simon the Cyrenian Speaks is a poem by American poet Countee Cullen about the titular speaker from the bible scripture. It originally appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse edited by Harriet Monroe in May 1924. Cullen nurtured the idea that Simon...

“Thoughts in a Zoo” is a poem composed by Countée Cullen. Cullen was one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance, which is a comprehensive term covering a multitude of African American artists that came to prominence in the 1920s. Cullen...

Countee Cullen's life was wrought with hardship and pain from an early age. He was brought by who many historians consider to be his paternal grandmother to Harlem, New York at the age of nine. His grandmother raised him until he was 15 when she...

"A Brown Girl Dead" is a poem by Countee Cullen. Cullen's poem was initially written in 1923 and published in 1933.

Born in 1903, Countee Cullen was one of the most important voices in the 20th century and in the Harlem Renaissance, in which he...

Meera Syal’s 1996 debut novel, Anita and Me, is the coming-of-age story of nine-year-old Meena Kumar, a drama-seeking, pop-song-singing, slime-trail-extolling, British-Indian school girl.

In part inspired by Meera Syal’s upbringing in the West...

"A Meeting in the Dark" is a short story by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The story is set in his native country, specifically among the Kikuyu people, and the title refers to the innocent meeting between boyfriend and girlfriend that spirals...

Published in 1999 in Great Britain by Indian author Anita Desai, the novel is set in two countries, India and the United States, and tells the story of a sister, Uma, and her brother, Arun. Uma, an unmarried woman, endeavors to eke out a life for...

“To Rosamond” is a love poem written by the medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer is best known for his long-form poems, especially The Canterbury Tales. At three short stanzas, "To Rosamond" is strikingly brief in comparison. However,...