Michèle Marineau's 1992 novel The Road to Chlifa follows Karim Nakad, a seventeen-year-old refugee from the Lebanese civil war, as he faces discrimination in his new life in Montreal, Canada while grappling with the haunting memories of his...

"Beverly Hills, Chicago" first appeared in 1949, in Brooks' second collection of poetry, Annie Allen. The poem describes the speaker's experience driving through the affluent white neighborhood of Beverly, Chicago, as someone who is neither...

"We Real Cool" first appeared in Gwendolyn Brooks' third published collection of poetry entitled, The Bean Eaters, in which she continues to explore her primary theme, the experiences of Black people in America. Though she had always been writing...

"The Bean Eaters" is the title poem of Gwendolyn Brooks' third collection of poetry, published by Harpers in 1960. The poem describes an aging Black couple's ritual of sitting down and eating beans on their old, chipped plates while they silently...

The 57 Bus began as an article for the New York Times Magazine, published in 2015. But the whole time Slater crafted the article and researched the case, she fantasized "writing the story in a different way, for a different audience." Slater knew...

Published in September of 1989, Bharati Mukherjee's third novel, Jasmine, tells the story of its eponymous protagonist's journey from the small village of Hasnapur, India to Jalandhar, to Florida, to New York, and eventually to Iowa, inhabiting a...

Annihilation is a darkly complex novel from author Jeff VanderMeer, the first installment of his Southern Reach Trilogy. It seems to defy categorization: it is at once speculative fiction, science fiction, thriller, and horror, while also being...

"The Lady with the Dog" was written in 1899 by Russian writer and playwright Anton Chekhov, and was first published in the journal Russian Idea. It has often been deemed by critics to be Chekhov's answer to Anna Karenina; Lyudmila Parts calls it...

The Last Lunar Baedeker is a collection of poetry, satires, manifestos, feminist tracts, experimental plays, and autobiographical profiles by English author Mina Loy. Much of Loy's work talks about things like feminism, God and religion, and...

Written by Canadian author Esi Edugyan, Washington Black tells the story of a young man named George Washington "Wash" Black, who endeavors to escape the bonds of slavery in the Barbados. The book follows Black's escape, as well as what he does...

Carlos Fuentes' The Old Gringo is about a man named Ambrose Bierce. He is an American writer, soldier, and journalist. It tells the story about some of his days in Mexico around Pancho Villa's soldiers. It mostly talks about his encounter with...

Philadelphia, Here I Come! is Brian Friel's breakthrough success. He wrote it in 1964 after having written a few other plays, including The Enemy Within and The Blind Mice. Philadelphia's heart-wrenching and intimate portrayal of an Irishman's...

Esteban Echeverria was born in 1805 and died in 1851. Though he lived a rather short life, his contributions to literary process can hardly be overestimated, as Echeverria’s works are considered the first of Argentinian prose fiction.

Echeverria...

American Psycho is Bret Easton Ellis's third novel, released in 1991. The first-person narrator is a Wall Street investment banker named Patrick Bateman, who either is or imagines himself to be a prolific serial killer. Like other works which...

Written by author Martin L. Shoemaker, Today I Am Carey (published in 2009) tells the story of a person who is loses her memory and needs an android named Carey to help her have a normal life - and fill in all of the things that she can no longer...

During the press tour for Jojo Rabbit, writer/producer/director/actor Taika Waititi described the film as an “anti-hate” satire. An irreverent and farcical Nazi comedy about a Hitler Youth member who falls in love with a Jewish girl, Jojo Rabbit...

Before there was Count Dracula, there was Carmilla. Indeed, it was Sheridan Le Fanu who introduced the vampire into the English literature tradition. Carmilla was first presented to the world in serial form, published in four editions of a...

It is almost impossible to hear the name Chernobyl and think of anything other than the catastrophic nuclear disaster that took place there in 1986. Chernobyl is many things - including the birthplace of tennis megastar Maria Sharapova - but it...