Time to change the literature we teach

If you had to recommend five books to someone who had just learned how to speak English, five books to introduce this person to the greatest of what English Literature has to offer, which would you choose? Answer this question in your mind, your own five favorites. What is on your list? Now make a list of the five books an English teacher or professor would make. Is Jane Eyre on that list? How about Great Expectations or Oliver Twist? Any number of Jane Austen classics? Without a doubt these are the novels that American students have to read in college or high school. What I have to wonder is, why don’t these two lists ever match up? Are the novels stressed in college and high school English classes really the best that the English language has to offer?

As a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s English Department, I have definitely read all of these novels. In fact, I read all of these novels more than once while attempting to earn my English degree. Along with the usual suspects: Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and Austen, I also read James Joyce’s The Dubliners, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein multiple times throughout my collegiate career. (The worst offenders being Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, both of which I read four times during college). This is certainly not what I expected to get out of my English degree. I expected to read several classics from each era of English Literature, but I did not expect to be spending all my time in one or two centuries, never once venturing anywhere near Post-Modern or Contemporary Lit. I’ll never forget what one of my English professors taught me as we discussed Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations; he told us that these novels were how people at that time relaxed instead of reading magazines or watching TV. He said these novels were the equivalent of soap operas for these people. These novels are character heavy, plot heavy, as well as full of love triangles, secret identities, and troubled pasts. Imagine if these classics were released today, in exactly the same format, to today’s market.

What issues do English teachers and professors have with Contemporary Literature? What is wrong with teaching Toni Morrison in your English class? Or Margaret Atwood? What is wrong with Kurt Vonnegut? Or, for that matter, why do we only read novels from English authors to understand the power of literature? All of my favorite novels come out of Modern, Post-Modern, and Contemporary Literature, and several of them are of non-English speaking origins. Students should be taught about what is relevant today. Shouldn’t we be spending our time understanding what types of writing will touch people today? I understand that the “classics” have their place in English classes, but their role should be limited and placed in context. As an English major, it would have been a thrill to spend time examining the types of literature that become best sellers today. What moves modern readers? Today we have TV, we have magazines, writers have to do something extra to convince people to spend the time and money required to read a novel. Shouldn’t our educations of literature reflect what is going on today?

Which five books would you recommend to someone unfamiliar with English Literature?