Missoula Public Library’s New Reading Challenge Lists are fun to review when you are looking for something to read. This week I want to highlight some choices from Left-handed Authors.
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation, gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today.
The book is a personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two ”letters,“ written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as ”sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature.
The Story of My Life: The Restored Edition by Helen Keller
Helen Keller’s story of struggle and achievement is one of unquenchable hope. From tales of her difficult early days, to details of her relationship with her beloved teacher Anne Sullivan, to her impressions of academic life, Keller’s honest, straightforward writing lends insight into an amazing mind.
Originally published in 1903, Keller’s fascinating memoir narrates the events of her life up to her third year at Radcliffe College. In addition to reprinting Keller’s long-lost original work, this edition contains excerpts from her little-known, deeply personal memoir The World We Live In, which give readers a detailed look into an otherwise unimaginable existence, as well as an excerpt from Out of the Dark, a political commentary Keller wrote during her years as a socialist.
Helen Keller, born in 1880, was the first deaf-blind graduate of Radcliffe College. Later, she became a high-profile socialist, and throughout her life she was a strong advocate for the blind and deaf communities, visiting over thirty-five countries and publishing fourteen books about her experiences, which have been translated into more than fifty languages. She died in 1968.
Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener’s magnificent saga of the West is a celebration of the frontier. The story of Colorado—the Centennial State—is manifested through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt, fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; the cowboy, Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe. In Centennial, trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters are brought together in the dramatic conflicts that shape the destiny of the legendary West—and the entire country.
Satirist, novelist, and keen observer of the American scene, Mark Twain remains one of the world's best-loved writers. This delightful collection of Twain's favorite and most memorable writings includes selected tales and sketches such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once, Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn, and A True Story. It also features excerpts from his novels and travel books (including Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi, among others; autobiographical writings; as well as selected letters and speeches. The collection also reprints the complete text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, including the often omitted raftsmen passage.
Born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, Eudora Welty shares details of her upbringing that show us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing as well. Everyday sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father’s coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that became a metaphor for her mother’s sturdy independence, Eudora’s earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture.
Part memoir, part exploration of the seeds of creativity, this unique insight of a writer’s beginnings offers a rare glimpse into the Mississippi childhood that made Eudora Welty the acclaimed and important writer she would become.
Other left-handed writers on the list: Bill Bryson, Lewis Carroll, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germaine Greer, Franz Kafka, Ted Koppel, Barack Obama, Helen Hoover Santmyer, R.L. Stine, and H.G. Wells.
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