AP Literature

Required Reading and Assignment

The AP Literature and Composition course is meant to function as a college-level Introduction to Literature class, where the basics of literary analysis are applied to texts of high literary merit. AP students should be ready, on the first day of class, to demonstrate their mastery over high school level analysis and plunge into discourse on a collegiate level. Literary analysis moves well beyond a decoding of the literal events in a text, into a discussion of author’s craft.

Students entering into Advanced Placement Literature and Composition MUST complete the following two assignments:

  1. Read Amanda Gorman’s - Call Us What We Carry

  • Students should take careful notes on form, structure, literary and poetic devices, and diction.

  • Students should be prepared to complete a FRQ (Free Response Question) upon return to school.

  1. Read a text from an author outside the United States (aligned with summer reading theme) from the provided list, or select a text of equal literary merit (Nobel Prize, Man Booker Prize, National Book Award Winner).


List of Suggested Titles (please note that you are not limited to this list by any means):

Afterlives - Abdulrazak Gurnah

The Association of Small Bombs - Karan Mahajan

Flights or Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Takarczuk

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Orphan Master’s Son - Adam Johnson

Pachinko - Min Jin Lee

Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Adichie

Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart

The Sympathizer - Viet Than Nguyen

The White Castle - Oran Pamuk