American Classic Literature Everyone Should Read

Jack London’s two most beloved tales of survival in Alaska were inspired by his experiences in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. Both novels grippingly dramatize the harshness of the natural world and what lies beneath the thin veneer of human civilization.

One of the most important writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes may be best known as a poet, but he was also a brilliant storyteller, blending elements of blues and jazz, speech and song, into a triumphant and wholly original idiom. This compendium comprises Hughes’s debut poetry collection, The Weary Blues, which catapulted him into literary stardom; his award-winning debut novel, Not Without Laughter, published in 1930 to critical raves; and his 1933 collection of short stories The Ways of White Folks.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever …

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. This “powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinching look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.

The “wisest and most captivating novel” (Boston Globe) from the author of the bestselling The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Set in San Francisco and in a remote village of Southwestern China, Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses is a tale of American assumptions shaken by Chinese ghosts and broadened with hope. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humor, Tan conjures up a story of the inheritance of love, its secrets and senses, its illusions and truths.

A modern classic — both poignant and funny — about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor’s dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world.

The beloved story of the March girls is a classic American feminist novel, reflecting the tension between cultural obligation and artistic and personal freedom. The charming story of these four “little women” and their wise and patient mother Marmee enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England was an instant success when first published in 1868 and has been adored for generations.

From the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a Yellow Sun, a modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America — and the search for what it means to call a place home.

Edith Wharton’s acclaimed novel of love, duty, and half-known truths in Gilded Age New York society. Written in 1920, Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a time and place long gone by — 1870s New York City — beautifully captures the complexities of passion, independence, and fulfillment, and how painfully hard it can be for individuals to truly see one another and their place in the world.

A 1946 Filipino American social classic about the United States in the 1930s from the perspective of a Filipino migrant laborer who endures racial violence and struggles with the paradox of the American dream.

The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last 50 years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English, my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.” Told in a series of vignettes — sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous — Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time.

Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming promise of the United States with nothing but four dollars and a suitcase full of Shakespeare to his name, the young, idealistic Chungpa Han arrives in a New York teeming with expatriates, businessmen, students, scholars, and indigents. Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature.

With its brilliant and brutal portrayal of the Corleone family, The Godfather burned its way into our national consciousness. This unforgettable saga of crime and corruption, passion and loyalty continues to stand the test of time, as the definitive novel of the Mafia underworld.

In Colson Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: Engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman’s will to escape the horrors of bondage — and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads — driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

In the far future, on a remote planet, an epic adventure awaits. Here is the first novel of Frank Herbert’s magnificent Dune saga — a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction series of all time. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism, and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women — their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love.

Young, handsome, and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby seems to have everything. But at his mansion east of New York City, where the party never seems to end, one thing will always be out of reach: The married Daisy Buchanan, whose house is visible from Gatsby’s just across the bay. A brilliant evocation of the Roaring Twenties and a satire of a postwar America obsessed with wealth and status, The Great Gatsby in a novel whose power remains undiminished after a century.