Spinoff thread: Literature recommendations for "Intro to Adulthood" Reading List?

[mathnerd]

Spinoff thread for Literature recommendations for coming of age stories as an intro to adulthood for teens (high school age) kids. Any and all recommendations are welcome on this thread. I am making a summer reading list for this specific purpose.

Thank you, @royspeed for your recommendations on the other thread:

From RoySpeed:

I second Farrar's comment about literature.

I would add that in my experience with teaching adolescents, the contributions of literature to their "Intro to Adulthood" extends well beyond the works traditionally thought of as coming-of-age stories.

To illustrate, I agree with something William Deresiewicz has written in his book A Jane Austen Education — here he's writing about Pride and Prejudice:

• Elizabeth [Bennet] was all of twenty, and her mistakes were errors of youth — the mistakes, precisely, of a person who has never made mistakes, or at least, who has never been forced to acknowledge them. Beneath the polished wit that she flashed at the world like a suit of armor, Elizabeth was still scarcely more than a girl. "If I were determined to get a rich husband, or any husband": that was the statement, not of someone who knew what she wanted from life, but of someone who hadn't even started to figure it out. When she had her epiphany — "[I've been] blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd" — she added a final count to her indictment: "Till this moment I never knew myself." Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice, his prejudice and her pride: these may have set the plot in motion, but by putting me [the reader] through Elizabeth's experiences — by having her make mistakes and learn from them — what the novel was really showing me was how to grow up... [emphasis mine]

Another illustration of literature as "Intro to Adulthood": In my course Novels by Women, after we completed reading Kate Chopin's The Awakening, one of my students declared Chopin's novel a sort of twist on the traditional bildungsroman (her word). Her explanation: At the beginning of the novel, the major character, is already approaching middle age and living the life of settled marriage, yet Chopin shows how Edna's unhappiness with her married life is entirely traceable to her stunted development in adolescence. The novel, in other words, looks backward through Edna's moral, psychological, and social development as an adolescent and pinpoints the experiences that caused her to stop growing.

My students' observations sometimes blow me away.

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Thank  you, @Farrar for the list on the other thread:

Farrar:

I honestly think literature is one of the best ways to accomplish this goal. It's part of why I spent a year reading coming of age stories with my kids.

I like reading the classics like Roy Speed is recommending through that lens. But also, I find that many of the classic "coming of age" books hold up just fine like...

Catcher in the Rye
A Separate Peace
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
I Capture the Castle

But also, I think lots of YA books also work really well. I had great discussion with students in class or with my own kids about some of these...

The Poet X
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
I'm Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Two Boys Kissing
The Hate U Give
Looking for Alaska

But it just depends. There are good coming of age books for all kinds of things.

 

Edited May 28, 2022 by mathnerd

[kokotg]

Hamlet! But then, what ISN'T Hamlet about?

But, yeah, my primary reading of Hamlet is all about trying to separate from your parents and your parents' worldview and make your own way. 

[Acorn]

Thank you for great suggestions.

I’m creating a shelf of encouraged summer reads for 9th and 11th. They attend a public school that for high school so far has been short stories, historical speeches and 2-3 modern popular novels. 
The shelf under construction:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Great Gatsby

To Kill A Mockingbird

Born A Crime

Looking for Alaska

Curious Incident of the Dog in the nighttime

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

 

The 11th grader plans to reread DiscWorld for the third straight summer and LOTR for nth million time. I’m accepting that those are his coming of age books. I just want to expand the edges.

 

Edited May 30, 2022 by Acorn

[royspeed]

19 hours ago, Acorn said:

I’m creating a shelf of encouraged summer reads for 9th and 11th. They attend a public school that for high school so far has been short stories, historical speeches and 2-3 modern popular novels. 

Are you seeking suggestions for fiction only?

[Acorn]

23 hours ago, royspeed said:

Are you seeking suggestions for fiction only?

Most of us in this house prefer nonfiction, so it is usually other genres that need encouragement.  I love book suggestions though, so if you do have favorite ideas, please share.