My Graduate School Journey in Books

Getting a graduate degree is no joke. It is intense, taxing, and full of laborious tasks. However, graduate school has also proven to be one of the most fulfilling life experiences I have had in my life so far. Not only have I gotten to take classes titled Postcolonial Literature, Literary Theory and Criticism, and Nonfiction Writing in just one year, but I have also gained some lifelong friends. When is it easier to bond with people who are suffering just like how you're suffering than in grad school?

My newest graduate school update is a decision regarding my comprehensive exams and thesis. While I was previously specializing in African and African American Literature, I have decided to change my path. I am now specializing in creative writing and dystopian literature. My comprehensive exam (this huge test where you have to read a whole list of books and write like six full-length essays in 24 hours to determine whether you are knowledgeable enough to graduate or not) is focused on dystopian literature and writing dystopian fiction. This goes hand in hand with my thesis. I'll be writing a dystopian novel during my final semester. Whew. I could use some encouragement on this one.

On to the good part of this rambling post - the reading list!
I would love to share with my readers my reading list that my comprehensive exam will based off of. Titled "Dystopian Fiction with Research in Class Dynamics," here is the list!


Fiction:
1.     Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1932)
2.     1984, George Orwell (1949)
3.     Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953)
4.     Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954)
5.     The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick (1962)
6.     Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (1985)
7.     The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)
8.     Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood (2003)
9.     Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
10.  The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
11.  Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (2010)
12.  “The Semplica-Girl Diaries,” from Tenth of December, George Saunders (2013)
13.  The Book of Strange New Things, Michael Faber (2014)
14.  Red Rising, Pierce Brown (2014)
15.  Everything Belongs to the Future, Laurie Penny (2016)
16.  Zero K, Don Delillo (2016)
17.  The Power, Naomi Alderman (2016)
18.  Borne, Jeff VanderMeer (2017)
19.  The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch (2017)
20.  American War, Omar El Akkad (2017)
21.  Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich (2017)
22.  Red Clocks, Leni Zumas (2018)

Poetry:
1.     “The Darkling Thrush,” Thomas Hardy (1900)
2.     “The Second Coming,” W.B. Yeats (1919)
3.     “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot (1922)
4.      “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg (1956)
5.     “Bored,” Margaret Atwood (1994)

Non-fiction:
1.     Women, Race, and Class, Angela Davis (1981)
2.     Where We Stand: Class Matters, bell hooks (2000)
3.     Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
4.     Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing up Working Class, Michelle Tea (2003)
5.     The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
6.     Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (2016)


Craft:
1.     The Writing Life, Annie Dillard (1989)
2.     Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury (1990)
3.     Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott (1994)
4.     Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, Charles Baxter (1997)
5.     Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (revised edition, 1998)
6.     On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King (1999)
7.     The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, Marie Arana (2003)



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