Introduction to Critical Reading

Part I: POETRY. Kristine Batey, Lot's Wife. Genesis 19: 12-26. E.A. Robinson, Richard Corey. Langston Hughes, I, Too. Langston Hughes, Harlem. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. e.e. cummings, nobody loses all the time. Alden Nowlan, Warren Pryor. Seamus Heaney, Digging. Langston Hughes, Mother to Son. Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays. Gary Soto, A Red Palm. Rita Dove, Daystar. William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark. Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home. George Macbeth, Bedtime Story. Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll. M. Carl Holman, Mr. Z. W.H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen. Alastair Reid, Curiosity. Billy Collins, The History Teacher. William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Innocence. William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience. Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est. Julia Alvarez, How I Learned to Sweep. Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It. Donald Justice, Counting the Mad. Emily Dickinson, Much Madness Is Divinist Sense. Andrew Hudgins, Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead. Howard Nemerov, The Vacuum. Alden Nowlan, Weakness. Adrienne Rich, Power. Robert Frost, Mending Wall. Cathy Song, Lost Sister. Li-Young Lee, Persimmons. Ai, Riot Act, April 29, 1992. Sekou Sundiata, Blink Your Eyes. Rita Dove, Parsley. Bob Hicok, What Would Freud Say? Part II: FICTION. Katharine Brush, Birthday Party. Shirley Jackson, The Lottery. Tobias Wolff, Powder. Eudora Welty, A Worn Path. Alice Walker, Everyday Use. Jess Mowry, Crusader Rabbit. Judy Budnitz, Miracle. Ray Bradbury, The Veldt. Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing. Zora Neale Hurston, The Gilded Six-Bits. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergerson. Andre Dubus, The Fat Girl. Gish Jen, What Means Switch. Sherman Alexie, What You Pawn I Will Redeem. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Cell One. William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily. Joyce Carol Oates, Life After High School. Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants. John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums. Part III: ESSAYS. Dick Gregory, Shame. George Orwell, A Hanging. Nicholas Bramble, Fifth Period Is Facebook. Doug Fodeman and Marje Monrow, The Impact of Facebook on our Students. Larry Magid, Teen 'Sexting': Stupid and Illegal. Michael Dillingham, Steroids, Sports and the Ethics of Winning. Kate Schmidt, Just Say Yes to Steroids - Learn, Make Better Choices. Kurt Weisenfeld, Making the Grade. Alton Fitzgerald White, Right Place Wrong Place. Amy Tan, Mother Tongue. Ann Coulter, Disgusting Doesn't Make It "Speech." Leonard Pitts, Should a Man Be Put in Jail for What He's Thinking? Cindi Ross Scope, Every Choice Has Its Consequences. Cynthia Fox, Starved Out. Deborah Gregory, Heavy Judgment: A Sister Talks about the Pain of "Living Large." Nancy Gibbs, When Is It Rape? Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria. William J. Chambliss, The Saints and the Roughnecks. Part IV: TEXTBOOK CHAPTERS. Joseph R. Conlin, Presidency in Crisis, from The American Past: A Survey of American History. Nijole V. Benokraitis, Culture, from SOC.

This unique college reading text gives students experience reading and evaluating poetry, short stories, essays, and textbook chapters. An innovative Instructor's Manual gives instructors a wealth of teaching ideas and background material on each piece with a focus on critical thinking.