Colonial Period to 1700

Native American Oral Narrative
Talk Concerning the First Beginning (Zuni)
The Origin of Stories (Seneca)
Iroquois or Confederacy of the Five Nations (Iroquois)
Raven Makes a Girl Sick and Then Cures Her (Tsimshian)
The Bungling Host (Hitchiti)
Creation of the Whites (Yuchi) 

Native American Oral Poetry
Love Song (Aleut)
Woman's Divorce Dance Song
(Jane Green)
Formula to Secure Love (Cherokee)
War Song (Crow)
War Song (Young Doctor, Makah)


New Spain

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
from Journal of the First Voyage to America, 1492-1493

Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490?-1556?)
Relation of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
from Chapter VII: The Character of  the Country
from Chapter VIII: We Go from Aute
from Chapter X: The Assault from the Indians
from Chapter XI: Of What Befel Lope de Oviedo with the Indians
from Chapter XXI: Our Cure of Some of the Afflicted
from Chapter XXIV: Customs of the Indians of That Country 
from Chapter XXVII: We Moved Away and Were Well Received
from Chapter XXXII: The Indians Give Us the Hearts of Deer
from Chapter XXXIII: We See Traces of Christians
from Chapter XXXIV: Of Sending for the Christians

Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555-1620)
The History of New Mexico
from Canto I: Which sets forth the outline of the history . . .

History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
48 In Reply to a Gentleman from Peru, Who Sent Her Clay Vessels While Suggesting She Would Better Be a Man

Don Antonio de Otermín (fl. 1680)
Letter on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680

The Coming of the Spanish and the Pueblo Revolt (Hopi)


New France

Samuel de Champlain (1570?-1635)
The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604-1618
from The Voyages to the Great River St. Lawrence, 1608-1612

The Jesuit Relations
How Father Jogues was Taken by the Iroquois, and What He Suffered On his First Entrance into their Country

Chesapeake
Thomas Harriot (1560-1621)
A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia   

John Smith (1580-1631)
The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles
Book III
from Chapter 2 [Smith as captive at the court of Powhatan in 1608]
from Chapter 8 [Smith's Journey to Pamaunkee]
from A Description of New England


New England

Thomas Morton (1579?-1647?)
New English Canaan
Book I: Containing the originall of the Natives, their manners & Customes, with their tractable nature and love towards the English
from Chapter IV: Of their Houses and Habitations
from Chapter VI: Of the Indians
apparrell
Chapter VIII: Of their Reverence, and respect to age
Chapter XVI: Of their acknowledg-ment of the Creation, and
immortality of the Soule
from Chapter XX: That the Salvages live a contended life  
Book III: Containing a description of the People that are planted there, what remarkable Accidents have happened there . . . , what Tenents they hould, together with the
practise of their Church.
from Chapter I: Of a great League made with the Plimmouth Planters after their arrivall, by the Sachem of those Territories
from Chapter V: Of a Massacre made upon the Salvages at Wessaguscus
from Chapter VII: Of Thomas Mortons entertainement at Plimmouth, and castinge away upon an Island.
Chapter XVI: How the 9 worthies put mine Host of Ma-re-Mount into the inchaunted Castle at  Plimmouth, and terrified him with the Monster Briareus

John Winthrop (1588-1649)
from A Modell of Christian Charity
from The Journal of John Winthrop

William Bradford (1590-1657)
Of Plymouth Plantation
Book I
from Chapter I: The Separatist Interpretation of the Reformation in England 1550-1607
from Chapter IX: Of their Voyage, and how they Passed the Sea; and of their Safe Arrival at Cape Cod
Book II
from Chapter XI: The Remainder of Anno 1620 [The Mayflower Compact, The Starving Time,
Indian Relations]
from Chapter XIV: Anno Domini 1623 [End of the Common Course and Condition]
from Chapter XIX: Anno Domini 1628 [Thomas Morton of Merrymount]
from Chapter XXIII: Anno Domini 1632 [Prosperity Brings Dispersal of Population]
from Chapter XXVIII: Anno Domini 1637 [The Pequot War]

Roger Williams (1603?-1683)
A Key into the Language of America
[Preface]: To my Deare and Welbeloved Friends and Countreymen, in old and new England
Chapter XXII: Of their Government and Justice
Testimony of Roger Williams relative to his first coming into the Narragansett country

Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672)
The Prologue [To Her Book]
The Author to Her Book
The Flesh and the Spirit
Before the Birth of One of Her Children
To My Dear and Loving Husband
A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment
In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and Half Old
On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet, Who Died on 16 November, 1669, being but a Month, and One Day Old
Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666

The Bay Psalm Book (1640), The New England Primer (1683?)
The Bay Psalm Book
            from The Preface by John Cotton Psalms 19, 23, 137
The New England Primer
Alphabet

Mary White Rowlandson (1637?-1711)
from A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Edward Taylor (1642?-1729)
God's Determinations
The Preface
Occasional Poems
4. Huswifery
6. Upon Wedlock, & Death of Children
Preparatory Meditations, First Series
Prologue
8. Meditation Joh. 6.51. I am the Living Bread.
Preparatory Meditations, Second Series
Meditation 26. Heb. 9.13.14. How much more shall the blood of   Christ, etc.

Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)
from The Diary of Samuel Sewall
The Selling of Joseph, A Memorial

Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
The Wonders of the Invisible World
            V. The Trial of Martha Carrier at The Court of Oyer and Terminer, Held by Adjournment at Salem,
August 2, 1692 

Eighteenth Century

Settlement and Religion 

Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727)   
The Journal of Madam Knight

William Byrd II (1674-1744)
from The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina and The Secret History of the Line

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Personal Narrative
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713-1755) 
from Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge, . . . Written by her own Hand many years ago       

John Woolman (1720-1772)
from Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes

Francisco Palou (1723-1789)
Life of Junípero Serra
from Chapter XXII: The Expeditions Arrive at the Port of MontereyThe Mission and Presidio of San Carlos Are Founded


Voices of Revolution and Nationalism  

Handsome Lake (Seneca) 
How America Was Discovered

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
The Way to Wealth
A Witch Trial at Mount Holly
Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America
On the Slave-Trade
from The Autobiography

Part One [Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, 1771]  
Part Two [Continuation of the Account of My Life Begun at Passy, 1784]

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)
from Letters from an American Farmer
from Letter I: Introduction
from Letter II: On the Situation, Feelings, and Pleasures of an American Farmer
from Letter III: What Is an American?
from Letter IX: Description of Charles Town; Thoughts on Slavery; on Physical Evil; A Melancholy Scene

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Common Sense
Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs
The American Crisis
Number 1
The Age of Reason
Chapter I: The Author's Profession of Faith

John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818)
Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776 
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776   
from Letters from John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, June 30, 1778    
from Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)  
from Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson
A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled
Notes on the State of Virginia
from Query VI: Productions, Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal, Buffon and the Theory of Degeneracy
from Query XI: Aborigines, Original Condition and Origin   
from Query XVII: Religion
from Query XVIII: Manners . . . Effect of Slavery
Letter to Benjamin Banneker, Aug. 30, 1791
Letter to Peter Carr [Young man's
education]
from Letter to Benjamin Hawkins [Civilization of the Indians]
Letter to Nathaniel Burwell  [A Young Woman's Education]

Federalist and Anti-Federalist Contentions 
The Federalist No. 6 (Alexander Hamilton)
An Anti-Federalist Paper, To the Massachusetts Convention


Contested Visions, American Voices

Jupiter Hammon (1711-1806?)
An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly
[sic], Ethiopian Poetess, in Boston, who came from Africa at  eight years of age, and soon became acquainted with the gospel of    Jesus Christ

Samson Occom (Mohegan) (1723-1792)
A Short Narrative of My Life

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself
from Chapter 1
Chapter 2
from Chapter 3
from Chapter 7
from Chapter 10

Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)
On the Equality of the Sexes

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
A Political Litany
To Sir Toby
The Wild Honey Suckle
The Indian Burying Ground

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
To Mæcenas
To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North-America, & c
On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield 1770
On Being Brought from Africa to America
To the University of Cambridge, in New England
To His Excellency General Washington
Letter to Samson Occom, Feb. 11, 1774

Hendrick Aupaumut (Mahican) (1757-1830)  
from A Short Narration of My Last Journey to the Western Country

Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840) 
The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza Wharton
Letter I: To Miss Lucy Freeman
Letter II: To the Same
Letter III: To the Same
Letter IV: To Mr. Selby
Letter V: To Miss Lucy Freeman
Letter VI: To the Same
Letter VIII: To Mr. Charles Deighton
Letter XI: To Mr. Charles Deighton
Letter XII: To Miss Lucy Freeman
Letter XIII: To Miss Eliza Wharton
Letter XVIII: To Mr. Charles Deighton
Letter LXV: To Mr. Charles Deighton
Letter LXVIII: To Mrs. M. Wharton
Letter LXXI: To Mrs. Lucy Sumner
Letter LXXII: To Mr. Charles Deighton
Letter LXXIII: To Miss Julia Granby
Letter LXXIV: To Mrs. M. Wharton

Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865

Native America

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwa) (1800-1841)
Mishosha, or the Magician and His Daughters

William Apess (Pequot) (1798-?)
An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man

Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) (c. 1802-1839)
An Address to the Whites

Seattle (Duwamish) (1786-1866)
Speech of Chief Seattle


Tales and Narratives from Spanish America

Tales from the Hispanic Southwest
La comadre Sebastiana/Doña Sebastiana
Los tres hermanos/The Three Brothers

La Llorona, La Malinche, and Guadalupe
The Devil Woman

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo  (1808-1890)  
from Recuerdos históricos y personales tocante a la alta California

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)
from A Journey Through Texas
San Antonio
The Missions
The Mexicans in Texas


Revisioning New England

Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865)
Death of an Infant
Indian Names

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
from Nature
The American Scholar
Self-Reliance
Concord Hymn
The Rhodora
Brahma
Days

Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
from Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Resistance to Civil Government
Walden
            Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
            Higher Laws
            Spring
            Conclusion


Issues and Conflicts in Ante-Bellum America

David Walker (1785-1830)
from Appeal . . . to the Coloured Citizens of the World (third edition, 1829)

Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1873)
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of women
Letter VIII, The Condition of Women in the United States

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) 
Letters from New York
#14: [Homelessness, 1842]

Angelina Grimké (1805-1879)
from Appeal to the Christian Women of the South

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)  
Editorial from the first issue of
The Liberator

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery
Second Inaugural Address

Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton)  (1811-1872)
Hints to Young Wives
Soliloquy of a Housemaid
Independence

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Chapter I: Childhood
Chapter VI: The Jealous Mistress
Chapter X: A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl's Life    
Chapter XXI: The Loophole of Retreat
Chapter XLI: Free at Last

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
from Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences
Declaration of Sentiments

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)   
The Slave Mother
Free Labor
An Appeal to the American People


The Development of Narrative

Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Rip Van Winkle

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
Young Goodman Brown
The Birth-mark

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Ligeia
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Purloined Letter
SonnetTo Science
To Helen
The Raven
Annabel Lee

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
I: In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity
VII: The Mother's Struggle
XIII: The Quaker Settlement
XL: The Martyr

Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Benito Cereno

Alice Cary (1820-1871)
Clovernook, Second Series
Uncle Christopher's

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910)
Life in the Iron-Mills


The Emergence of American Poetic Voices

Songs and Ballads

Songs of the Slaves
Lay Dis Body Down
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Had
Deep River
Roll, Jordan, Roll
Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Steal Away to Jesus
There's a Meeting Here To-Night
Many Thousand Go
Go Down, Moses
Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel

Songs of White Communities
John Brown's Body
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Pat Works on the Railway
Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie
Shenandoah
Clementine
Life Is a Toil

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Thanatopsis
To a Waterfowl
Abraham Lincoln

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) 
A Psalm of Life
The Warning
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 
Preface to Leaves of Grass
(1855 edition)
Song of Myself
One's-Self I Sing
To The Garden of the World
In Paths Untrodden
When I Heard at the Close of the Day
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Beat! Beat! Drums!
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
To a Locomotive in Winter

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
[I never lost as much but twice]
[Success is counted sweetest]
[Come slowlyEden!]
[Wild NightsWild Nights!]
[There's a certain Slant of light]
[I'm Nobody! Who are you?]
[The Soul selects her own Society]
[Some keep the Sabbath going to Church]
[After great pain, a formal feeling comes]
[God is a distantstately Lover]
[Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?]
[What SoftCherubic Creatures]
[Much Madness is divinest Sense]
[This is my letter to the World]
[This was a PoetIt is That]
[I heard a Fly buzzwhen I died]
[This World is not Conclusion]
[I started EarlyTook my Dog]
[I reckonwhen I count at all]
[They shut me up in Prose]
[The Brainis wider than the Sky]
[I cannot live with You]
[I dwell in Possibility]
[One need not be a Chamberto be Haunted] 
[Publicationis the Auction]
[Because I could not stop for Death]
[She rose to His Requirementdropt]
[ It dropped so loin my Regard]
[My Life had stooda Loaded Gun]
[Presentimentis that long Shadowon the Lawn]  
[A narrow Fellow in the Grass]
[Title divineis mine!]
[Tell all the Truth but tell it slant]
[He preached upon Breadth till it argued him narrow] 
[What mystery pervades a well!]
[Heavenly Fathertake to thee]
[A Route of Evanescence]
[The Bible is an Antique Volume]
[To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee]
Letters
            To Abiah Root
            To T.W. Higginson
            To T.W. Higginson
            To T.W. Higginson

Late Nineteenth Century: 1865-1910

Nation, Regions, Borders

African American Folktales
Animal Tales
When Brer Deer and Brer Terrapin Runned a Race 
Why Mr. Dog Runs Brer Rabbit
The Signifying Monkey

Memories of Slavery
The Flying Africans

Conjure Stories
Two Tales from Eatonville, Florida

John and Old Marster
Massa and the Bear
Baby in the Crib
John Steals a Pig and a Sheep
Talking Bones
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(Mark Twain) (1835-1910)
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog
A True Story
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
The War Prayer

Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
II: The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932)
The Goophered Grapevine
Po' Sandy

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
Lyrics of Lowly Life
An Ante-Bellum Sermon
We Wear the Mask
When Malindy Sings
Lyrics of the Hearthside
Sympathy

John Milton Oskison (1874-1947)
The Problem of Old Harjo

Corridos
Kiansis I/Kansas I
Gregorio Cortez

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Editha

Henry James (1843-1916)
Daisy Miller: A Study
The Jolly Corner

Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
Désirée's Baby
The Story of an Hour

Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)
Up the Coulé

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
The Open Boat
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

Jack London (1876-1916)
South of the Slot


Critical Visions of Postbellum America

Standing Bear (Machunazha) (Ponca) (1829-1908)
What I Am Going to Tell You Here Will Take Me Until Dark 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
The Yellow Wall-Paper

Henry Adams (1838-1918)
The Education of Henry Adams
Chapter XXV: The Dynamo and the Virgin 


Developments in Women's Writing

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
My Contraband

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
A White Heron

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)
The Revolt of Mother

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930)
A Dash for Liberty

Sarah M. B. Piatt (1836-1894)
The Palace-Burner
We Two
His Mother's Way

Sophie Jewett (1861-1909)
Armistice
I Speak Your Name

Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863-1953)
The Wood-Chopper to His Ax
The Cross and the Pagan

Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)
I Sit and Sew
You! Inez!


The Making of Americans

Edith Maud Eaton (Sui Sin Far)
(1865-1914)
Mrs. Spring Fragrance
In the Land of the Free

Mary Austin (1868-1934)
Earth Horizon
III

Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa)(Sioux) (1876-1938)
The School Days of an Indian Girl
I: The Land of Red Apples
II: The Cutting of My Long Hair
III: The Snow Episode
VI: Four Strange Summers
VII: Incurring My Mother's Displeasure

Mary Antin (1881-1949)
The Promised Land
 from Chapter IX

José Martí (1853-1895)
Our America

Modern Period: 1910-1945

Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915)
Up from Slavery
Chapter XIII:  Two Thousand Miles for a Five-Minute Speech
Chapter XIV:  The Atlanta Exposition Address

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
The Souls of Black Folk
Chapter I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings
Chapter III: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Lift Every Voice and Sing
The Creation

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
Mr. Flood's Party
Eros Turannos

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
The Valley of Childish Things
Roman Fever

Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Wagner Matinee

Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)
Trifles

Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Mending Wall
The Road Not Taken
The Oven Bird
Out, Out
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Desert Places
Design

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
Hands

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
The Second Choice

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Spring
The Spring and the Fall
[Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare]
[Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink]
The Return
Justice Denied in Massachusetts

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
In a Station of the Metro
L'art, 1910
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Life and Contacts)
E.P. Ode pour L'election de Son Sepulchre
The Cantos
XLV [With usura hath no man a house of good stone]
CXX [I have tried to write Paradise]

Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Patterns
Venus Transiens
The Sisters

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
from The Making of Americans
Susie Asado
from The Mother of Us All

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Danse Russe
The Young Housewife
Spring and All
To Elsie
The Red Wheelbarrow

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
The Hairy Ape

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)
Smoke

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
[Buffalo Bill's]
[the Cambridge ladies who live in
furnished souls]
[i like my body when it is with your]
[my sweet old etcetera]
[i sing of Olaf glad and big]

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Waste Land

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Babylon Revisited 

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
Poetry
England
The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Hills Like White Elephants

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Sunday Morning
The Snow Man
Anecdote of the Jar
Of Modern Poetry

William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Barn Burning

Hart Crane (1899-1932)
Chaplinesque
The Bridge
            To Brooklyn Bridge
            The River
The Broken Tower


The New Negro Renaissance

Alain Locke (1885-1954)
The New Negro

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)
Cane
            Karintha
            Song of the Son
            Blood-Burning Moon
            Seventh Street

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) 
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Weary Blues
Johannesburg Mines
Harlem
I, Too
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
When the Negro Was in Vogue
Dream Variations

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Incident
Yet Do I Marvel
Heritage
Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song

Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989)
Ma Rainey
Slim in Hell
Remembering Nat Turner

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Sweat

Claude McKay (1889-1948)
The Harlem Dancer
If We Must Die
The Lynching
America

Blues Lyrics


Issues and Visions in Modern America

Randolph Bourne (1886-1918)
Trans-National America

Anzia Yezierska (1881?-1970)
America and I

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
U.S.A.
The Body of an American
The Bitter Drink

Meridel LeSueur (1900-1996)
Women on the Breadlines

Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
Waiting for Lefty

Thomas S. Whitecloud (Chippewa) (1914-1972)
Blue Winds Dancing

D'arcy McNickle (1904-1977)
Hard Riding

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
Infant Boy at Midcentury
Amazing Grace in the Back Country

Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976)
Children

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter One
Chapter Five

Richard Wright (1908-1960)
The Ethics of Living Jim

Margaret Walker (b. 1915)
For My People
Ballad of the Hoppy-Toad

Younghill Kang (1903-1972)
East Goes West
Part One, Book Three

Carved on the Walls: Poetry by Early Chinese Immigrants
from The Voyage
8 [Instead of remaining a citizen of China, I willingly became an ox]
from The Detainment
31 [There are tens of thousands of poems composed on these walls]
from The Weak Shall Conquer
35 [Leaving behind my writing brush and removing my sword, I came to America]
38 [Being idle in the wooden
building, I opened a window]
42 [The dragon out of water is
humiliated by ants] 
from Deportees, Transients
69 [Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days]

Contemporary Period:  1945 to the Present

Contemporary Period: The Earlier Generation

The Earlier Generation: Prose

Eudora Welty (1909-2001)
Why I Live at the P.O.

Tillie Lerner Olsen (b. 1912)
I Stand Here Ironing

Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956)
from America Is In the Heart

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)
The Magic Barrel

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994)
King of the Bingo Game

Hisaye Yamamoto (b. 1921)
Seventeen Syllables

Grace Paley (b. 1922)
A Conversation With My Father

James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Previous Condition

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Malcolm X (1925-1965)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X 
Chapter 19: 1965

Mario Suarez (1925-1998)
El Hoyo
Senor Garza

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
I Have a Dream

Paule Marhsall (b. 1929)
To Da-duh: In Memoriam


The Earlier Generation: Drama

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
Portrait of a Madonna

Edward Albee (b. 1928)
The Sand Box


The Earlier Generation: Poetry

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
Root Cellar
My Papa's Waltz

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
The Fish
The Man-Moth
At the Fishhouses
Filling Station
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)
Absalom
The Minotaur
The Poem as Mask
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X

Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
The Mother
We Real Cool
A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi.  Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till

Robert Lowell, Jr. (1917-1977)
Memories of West Street and Lepke
Skunk Hour
For Theodore Roethke
For the Union Dead
Near the Ocean

Robert Creeley (b. 1926)
I Know a Man
For Love
Words
America

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)
My Heart
The Day Lady Died
Why I Am Not a Painter

John Ashbery (b. 1927)
The Instruction Manual
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
As You Came from the Holy Land

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Her Kind
Housewife

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
Diving into the Wreck
Power
Not Somewhere Else, But Here


The Beat Movement

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)
I Am Waiting
Dove Sta Amore . . .
The Old Italians Dying

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
The Vanishing American Hobo

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
Howl
America


Contemporary Period: New Generations

New Generations: Prose

John Barth (b. 1930)
Night-Sea Journey

Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
Recitatif

John Updike (b. 1932)
Trust Me

Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933)
The Sky Is Gray

N. Scott Momaday (b. 1934)
from The Way to Rainy Mountain
Headwaters
Prologue
from The Introduction
IV
XVI
XVII
XXIV
Epilogue
Rainy Mountain Cemetery

Rudolfo A. Anaya (b. 1937)
from Bless Me, Ultima
            Dieciocho

Raymond Carver (1938-1988)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)
The Lesson

Frank Chin (b. 1940)
Railroad Standard Time

Maxine Hong Kingston (b. 1940)
No Name Woman

Bharati Mukerjee (b. 1940)
Happiness

Gloria Anzaldua (b. 1942)
from Borderlands/ La Frontera
Chapter 3: Entering the Serpent

Alice Walker (b. 1944)
Laurel

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna) (b. 1948)
Lullaby

Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
Don't Tell Me You Don't Know

Louise Erdrich (Chippewa) (b. 1954)
Saint Marie

Helena Maria Viramontes (b. 1954)
The Cariboo Cafe

Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)
Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock


Vietnam Conflict

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
Life at War
What Were They Like?
A Woman Alone

Robert Bly (b. 1926)
Counting Small-Boned Bodies
The Teeth Mother Naked at Last

Tim O'Brien (b. 1946)
In the Field

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)
Tu Do Street
Prisoners
Thanks
Facing It


New Generations: Poetry

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
Riprap
Vapor Trails
Wave
It Was When

Etheridge Knight (1931-1991)
The Idea of Ancestry
The Violent Space (or when your sister sleeps around for money)
Ilu, The Talking Drum
A Poem for Myself (Or Blues for a Mississippi Black Boy)

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Daddy
Lady Lazarus
Fever 103

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
Power
Walking Our Boundaries
Never Take Fire From a Woman
Stations

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)
An Agony, As Now
Ka Ba
Black People: This Is Our Destiny
A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand
Numbers, Letters

Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934)
to blk/record/buyers
Masks
A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King

June Jordan (b. 1936)
Poem About My Rights
To Free Nelson Mandela

Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra
Flight to Canada

Simon Oretiz (Acoma Pueblo) (b. 1941)
from Sand Creek

Pedro Pietri (b. 1944)
Puerto Rican Obituary
Traffic Violations

Jessica Hagedorn (b. 1949)
The Death of Anna May Wong
Filipino Boogie

Victor Hernandez Cruz (b. 1949)
urban dream
Mountain Building
Table of Contents

Joy Harjo (Creek) (b. 1951)
The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window

Gary Soto (b. 1952)
Braly Street
Mexicans Begin Jogging
Black Hair

Rita Dove (b. 1952)
Kentucky, 1833
O
Daystar

Lorna Dee Cervantes (b. 1954)
Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway
Poem for the Young White Man . . . .

Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)
I Ask My Mother To Sing
My Father, In Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud