to kill a mockingbird book review
208107987
Book Review: Reading Harper Lee: Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman
Reading Harper Lee: Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Claudia Durst Johnson is meant to assist students studying the work of Harper Lee by providing context for her life and work and examining key topics such as race, class, and gender. It functions in some ways as an update to Johnson's Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents (Greenwood, 1994) since it includes analysis of Go Set A Watchman. Rather than being a replacement for the 1994 reference work, it functions as a great complement for a student studying Harper Lee. While Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird provides numerous primary documents to help a student understand the historical context, Reading Harper Lee provides a more concise analysis of themes, which potentially makes it more accessible to a student new to literary criticism.
Reference User Services Quarterly
Arianne Hartsell-Gundy
157068580
To Kill a Mockingbird and Asylum Seeker Justice [Book Review]
Kerry Murphy
140887473
Hey, Boo: Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (review)
Hey, Boo: Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (2011) Directed by Mary McDonagh Murphy Distributed by First Run Features www.firstrunfeatures.com 82 minutes "I never expected that the book would sell," said Harper Lee in a 1964 radio interview, "I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers. But I was hoping that maybe somebody might like it well enough to give me some encouragement about it." The quick, merciful death never came, for the book in question was To Kill a Mockingbird, which upon publication became an immediate critical and commercial success. It won a Pulitzer Prize and soon became a staple of high school English classes. It has long remained a best seller and is regarded as one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It also made Nelle Harper Lee an overnight celebrity. In the immediate wake of the novel's publication in 1960, she made public appearances and gave a number of interviews, discussing both the novel and its 1962 film adaptation. She published a handful of nonfiction articles in the 1960s, and then effectively vanished from public life. As impactful as the novel has been, the mystery of Harper Lee has also stoked fascination. Where kind of person was/is she? Why did she stop speaking publically? And most importantly: why has there been no second novel? Hey, Boo: Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird serves to lift the veil a bit, if not completely obliterate the mystery, on the character of Harper Lee. This documentary, written, produced and directed by Mary McDonagh Murphy, creates something of a collage, by turns dealing with the novel, the author, the historical context, and the legacy, as well as with personal responses to the novel. Interviews make up much of Hey, Boo. Included are Tom Brokaw, Rosanne Cash and Oprah Winfrey. While each interview adds to the conversation about Jo Kill a Mockingbird, they at times seem to offer simply personal reactions, which, while not uninformative, tend to say more about the reader than the book. The various writers interviewed, such as Wally Lamb, James McBride, Anna Quindlen, Richard Russo, Allan Gurganus and Scott Turow, come off somewhat better, as they speak about the craft of writing and the narrative strategies of Lee's book, as well as how those strategies influenced their own approaches to fiction. Lamb is given abundant screen time, during which he speaks not only from the perspective of a novelist, but also from that of an educator, addressing To Kill a Mockingbird's use and reception in the classroom. Hey, Boo also uses various media to craft its portrait of its subject: photographs, both public and private, clips from television news broadcasts and talk shows, and snippets from a 1964 radio interview with Lee, which would prove to be her last. Also included are clips from motion pictures, such as 2005's Capote (in which Lee was played by Catherine Keener) 2006's infamous (in which she was played by Sandra Bullock) and, of course, Robert Mulligan's 1962 production of To Kill a Mockingbird. Considered by many to be one of the finest novel to film adaptations, this last provides much of the visual material for Hey, Boo. The film, winner of three Academy Awards, has become so iconic in its own right that it is difficult to consider Lee's novel without Atticus Finch evoking the image of Gregory Peck, or of Scout evoking Mary Badham, who also appears as an interview subject.
Marc Oxoby
142355133
I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora (review)
new Books for ChILdren And Young PeoPLe one summer day that is both fleeting and interminable is highlighted in nearly ten pages of mostly wordless snapshot illustrations, an evocation through visual pacing that text alone could never achieve. The book is poignant and melancholy, and it will be swiftly recognizable to those who only recently hovered at the cusp of adolescence, unsure sure whether they wanted to cross over even while knowing there was really no choice. Fans of the first graphic novel by this cousin duo, the similarly quiet, contemplative Skim (BCCB 5/08) will find this one to be equally compelling. As in most of life, not a lot actually happens, but a significant transformation takes place, one that's conveyed with nuance, sympathy, and beauty. (Publication information appears on p. 544. April Spisak, Reviewer
Kate Quealy-Gainer
140874421
Rape, Incest, and Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird: On Alabama's Legal Construction of Gender and Sexuality in the Context of Racial Subordination
In 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird (1) was published to significant popular acclaim: a reception that has proved enduring. Mockingbird remains one of the most widely circulated works in United States history. (2) Curiously enough, however, the nonpareil American novel known for its condemnation of racism has proven itself a more venerable object in the heart of the legal establishment than in that of the literary a peculiarity which has given rise to frequent comment. Despite its Pulitzer Prize, few literary scholars have engaged critically with the work. (3) Comparatively, Harper Lee's novel and the characters she constructs therein have received an unexpected and atypical amount of attention from a field law (4) that is defined by objective, rational perspectivalism and which is notorious for its ostensible disdain of the fictional and activist. Indeed, entire symposia and law review volumes have been dedicated to the work. (5) The book, however, steadfastly maintains its position as a masterpiece in the canons of American literature. Popular response to Mockingbird has been remarkable: it has enjoyed ninety four separate printings and appeared on secondary school reading lists as often as any other book in the English language. (6) By the close of the 1980s, Lee's story was mandatory reading in seventy percent of all public schools. (7) A 1991 survey found To Kill a Mockingbird listed second only to the Bible as the book that has had the most meaningful impact on the respondents' lives. (8) The popular and nascent critical treatment of Mockingbird has emphasized the story's racial themes. Perceptions of race particularly white notions of black inferiority are clearly a central object of critique in Lee's novel. To Kill a Mockingbird, after all, was a work penned in response to the agitated and volatile scenery of 1950s and 60s America a period renowned as much for its omnipresent reactionary violence as for its peaceful protest and civil disobedience. All around Lee, the intransigence of the South following the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (9) was on stark display. (10) In scripting Mockingbird, Lee sought to document the region's historic problem with racism and expose the anatomy of segregation at the moment of its legal dismantling. In doing so, she perspicaciously commented on the institutional mechanisms of racial hierarchy, (11) and ultimately turned to fiction to facilitate cultural change in the face of law's failure to end the injustices visited upon black citizens of southern towns. (12) While Mockingbird remarks on race openly, the book also invokes the theoretical framework of "intersectionality" developed by critical race theorists in the legal academy. These theorists argue that race does not occur independently of the histories of gender or sexuality. (13) Rather, gender and sexuality heavily influence and shape our conceptions of race. It is this additional layer to Lee's writing, her condemnation of southern mores regarding femininity and sexuality, which helps further expose the variety of institutional strategies operating to construct and police race both in past and present. The theory of intersectionality is explicated by Professor Kimberle Crenshaw in her landmark essay Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics. (14) Professor Crenshaw postulates that a black woman is more than just the separate layerings of gender plus race; she is a distinct personality who confronts distinctive forms of harassment and bias. (15) Because courts fail to grasp the mutually constitutive ways in which race and gender interact, black women's subjectivity and injuries go unrecognized. (16) Warning us, Crenshaw extends the following cautionary advice: It is incumbent on feminism to interrogate and take account of the ways in which dominant conceptions of gender are situated in, and operate in tandem with, histories of racial subordination.
Iris Halpern
61201959
Defending Atticus Finch [Book Review]
Critical review and analysis of the book 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee. Includes footnotes.
Abbey-Anne Smith
169800292
Book Review: Reading like a Serpent: What the Scarlet a is aboutReading Like a Serpent: What the Scarlet A Is About. By McEntyreMarilyn Chandler. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012. ISBN 978 1 61097 554 4. Pp. ix 134. $18.00.
Reading Like a Serpent: What the Scarlet A Is About. By Marilyn Chandler McEntyre. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012. ISBN 978 1 61097 554 4. Pp. ix 134. $18.00. With the possible exception of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter is the text America most often offers its young as both literature and history. Yet of these three frequently assigned novels, Hawthorne's is probably the least enjoyed and least understood. As Marilyn Chandler McEntyre observes in surveying her college students, many "recall The Scarlet Letter as stiff, boring, wordy, moralistic, lacking in plot, and generally incomprehensible" (1) When she reveals it as one of her favorite novels, "their curiosity is piqued either about the hidden merits of the book or about my taste and credibility. Some of them, no doubt, think I really ought to get a life" (1) Thus emerges the central premise of McEntyre's argument namely, that The Scarlet Letter, largely misunderstood, is a more playful, ambiguous, and challenging novel than is typically acknowledged, and requires a shrewd and careful reader. A teacher by trade as well as instinct, McEntyre promises to lead us through "the thickets of Hawthorne's antique syntax" and show us "how to navigate the interpretive mazes he maps" (2) The Scarlet Letter, she argues, is not about adultery or a host of other issues, "but rather about the sin of bad reading" (2) I couldn't agree more, yet my resistance rises when she adds that the novel is "deeply occupied with the ways we read Scripture" and that Hawthorne's purpose in The Scarlet Letter is "to invite his readers to critical biblical reflection" (2, 4) This does not ring true, at least for me, of the New England author described by his son Julian as having "never discussed religion in set terms either in his writings or in his talk" (quoted in John Updike, "Hawthorne's Creed" Hugging the Shore, 74) Is it likely that Hawthorne, whose religious orientation was ambiguous, was occupied with Scripture, or that he was inviting us to engage in critical biblical reflection? I remain doubtful, yet McEntyre is such an intelligent, clear eyed, and perceptive guide that I'm willing to follow and see where she leads. Hardly the first critic to devote attention to the act of reading in The Scarlet Letter, McEntyre joins, among others, critics Stephen Railton and David Leverenz. Although McEntyre's study at times pales in comparison, it nevertheless has appeal as well as originality. As indicated in its preface, Reading Like a Serpent is not meant to be a work of literary criticism or scholarship but rather "a series of personal reflections on how Hawthorne's literary techniques serve purposes whose urgency we still have reason to recognize" (ix) Although the second part of that passage feels vague, the book is written in an accessible, conversational style, free of academic jargon. In some respects, it reads like a series of lessons or sermons on The Scarlet Letter. By sermons I don't necessarily mean the author becomes preachy or tedious, but rather that she uses the novel to investigate, with her reader, aspects of human behavior and morality. Each of the book's nine chapters "Judge Not" "Not by Bread Alone" "Become as Little Children" "Render Unto Caesar" "Confess One to Another," "Into the Wilderness," "Those Not Against Us" "Sick and in Prison," "A Great Price" is built around a scriptural principle that McEntyre employs to shed light on important moments and scenes in the novel. In "Judge Not" she considers Jesus' words from Matt. 7:1 2: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (23) McEntyre applies this passage to the opening scene of The Scarlet Letter, in which Hester, emerging from prison, is accosted by a hostile group of women who seem quick to judge. The women, however, are described by the narrator in such "acerbic and misogynistic" terms that they are rendered ugly and aged, tempting the reader "to rush to their defense" (24)
James A Schiff
20053011
Book Review of Steven Johnson's Best Technology Writing 2009
There is certainly an undercurrent of several themes in these essays, but the most significant seems to be about reading. How has access to terabytes of digital information altered the way we read? Nicolas Carr in his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" argues ultimately that we are all becoming like HAL, feeling our minds going like the infamous computer in 2001. Carr solemnly ends his work by stating simply "our own intelligence flattens into artificial intelligence." The Onion supports this notion in its absurdist way with the story of Philip Meyer, an "eccentric" who actually finishes an entire book (Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird) Not surprisingly, the Onion reports that psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Schulz calls Meyer "a classic case of deviant behavior." Seriously, there are other examples of support for Carr in this collection, such as Dana Goodyear's insightful description of keitai shosetsu or cell phone novels. Millions of these novels are literally changing Japanese publishing and reading habits.
First Monday
Edward J Valauskas
148869683
Book Reviews [Book Review]
Publishers details for: The Heinemann English Project Text Study: Looking for Alibrandi, by Mark Stracey and Leanne Matheson, Heinemann, 2005. ISBN 1740814576. Publishers details for: The Heinemann English Project Text Study: Tomorrow When The War Began, by Leanne Matheson and Mark Stracey, Heinemann, 2005. ISBN 1740814568. Publishers details for: The Heinemann English Project Text Study: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Melissa Kennedy, Heinemann 2005. ISBN 1740814541. Publishers details for: The Heinemann English Project Text Study: Holes, by Helen Wadden, Heinemann 2005. ISBN 174081455 X.
Belinda Bower
189000267
Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Leigh Merritt (review)
SUMMER 2018 99 Kendi's description of To Kill a Mockingbird reveals that he misremembers the story. The day is not saved. Nevertheless, Harper Lee's narrative does exemplify the "white savior" plot, which lets whites off the hook for racism because one good white person saves the day or, as in this case, tries to. Thus, Kendi is right to call out this inadequate storyline, which does not really help readers understand race relations. Moreover, three particular books have dominated American popular literature in each of the last three centuries, far outselling any other. Each treats race relations, each was written by a white woman, and each made a triumphant transition to the stage or cinema. If one thinks about them all Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird one sees that Kendi is right: racism morphs but hardly disappears. His analysis as to how it changes over time is the book's great strength. Every prior era's racist thinking looks quaint to those in the present. But as Kendi notes, the racist thinking of the present era always looks "natural," commonsensical. In some ways, we may be witnessing a metamorphosing of polygenesis in the form of current human genome thinking. A nonracist or antiracist form of such thought might point out that it upends yesteryear's racism. The Khoisan people in southern Africa may be more racially different from people of eastern and central Africa, for instance, than are Caucasian people. Surely scholarship would best be served if it jettisons "race" entirely and instead looks at what biology, coupled with language studies, can suggest to us about the migration and isolation of human groups. But such an intellectual upheaval may not satisfy our seemingly endless capacity, noted so well by Kendi, to find or invent racial hierarchy everywhere. The great strength of Kendi's book is this demonstration that plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose "The more something changes, the more it stays the same" No one can read Stamped from the Beginning and imagine for a moment that America is postracial. Hopefully, most readers will look up after finishing, determined to do something to end all the morphing. James W. Loewen University of Vermont
Minoa D Uffelman