National Book Critics Circle Award Essays

  • Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

    506 Words  | 2 Pages

    Book Review Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt I read the book Angela's Ashes and I was truly amazed that it was true. I love reading about the old days and this is a book about Frank McCourt (the author) misfortunes during his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. It is sad at times and you can’t think "this is only a book" but still the best read in a long time. Angela's Ashes is written from the perspective of Angela's first-born son, Francis McCourt, the author of the novel. Angela and her

  • Toni Morrison Biography

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    dedicated to an African American author (2). Looked at the most successful black author of them all, Toni Morrison is the first most successful black author there ever was. This is true because she became the first successful black author and gotten award that no other African American and some authors never had.

  • Real Life Events In Song Of Solomon By Toni Morrison

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    United States in the 1930’s and on. In the novel Morrison identifies numerous real-life events that have been crucial in African-American history. In this paper I will explain the events in the story and how the events are real life events and how the critics responded to her story. The first event that I recognized was in Chapter 3 When hospital Tommy was talking to Milkman and Guitar. He said “And you not going to have no ship under your command to sail on, no train to run, and you can join the 332nd

  • Slow Getting Up: A Story Of NFL Survival From The Bottom Of The Pile

    652 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” Ben Fountain’s shaggy novel, the winner of last year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Here now is a book by Nate Jackson called “Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival From the Bottom of the Pile,” and it’s everything you want football memoirs to be but never are: hilarious, dirty, warm, human, honest, weird. Mr. Jackson played six seasons (twice as long as the average National Football League career), from 2002 to 2008, with the San Francisco 49ers and the

  • Censorship in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    one of America’s most renowned 20th century writers once said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get people to stop reading them” (Bradbury). In today’s society books are not burned, but some are being censored thus preventing people from enjoying the books they want to read. So what is censorship? Censorship is when an individual or an organization wants to restrict or limit access of a book to readers to avoid offending a group of people. Censorship has affected classrooms and

  • Power and Uncertainty in Elizabeth Bishop´s Poems

    709 Words  | 2 Pages

    created countless works that are intended to stimulate and spark emotion from their readers. One poet in particular that has mastered this skill was Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop is a well-known, world-renowned poet whose works facilitated her growing national fame. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911. She grew up in New England, and moved to Nova Scotia, Canada shortly after her father passed away and her mother moved on to another man. In the fall of 1930, Bishop then attended Vassar College

  • A Civil Action

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    fight some of the largest local corporations to prove the truth and get it stopped. This is the community setting for Jonathan Harr's true-to-life legal thriller A Civil Action. The book was an award winner for "Best Seller" in 1995 and was named the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award. The setting of the book is in the New England state of Woburn, Massachusetts. This is a sleepy little community that is overcast by local factories. The factories have been contaminating the ground and water

  • Hayden Carruth

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    retierment. He has published twenty-nine books, mostly of poetry but also a novel, four books of criticism, and anthologies as well. Four of his most recent books are Selected Essays & Reviews, Collected Longer Poems, Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, and Suicides and Jazzers. He edited poetry for, Poetry, Harper's, and for 20 years The Hudson Review. He has received fellowships from the Bollingen Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, most recently in 1995

  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    novel, The Road has received a plethora of reviews and honors since it's debut. In a New York Book Review article, an author, Michael Chabon discussed the novel's relation to well-known genres. Chabon insists that The Road is not science fiction, he says, “ultimately it is as a lyrical epic of horror that The Road is best understood.” Another honor The Road received was being apart of Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. During his interview he announced that his son, John Francis, was co-author of the novel

  • Angela's Ashes Analysis

    1360 Words  | 3 Pages

    would, he told it from the perspective of him as a child looking out onto the world instead of as an adult reflecting on his childhood. Angela’s Ashes received multiple national awards such as “Winner Of The Pulitzer Prize” in 1997, “Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award” in 1996, and “The Los Angeles Times Book Award” in 1996. The history behind Angela’s Ashes was it took place during The Great Depression. The Great Depression was a time period where

  • Donald Barthelme

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    tale, the novel. He won the National Book Award for Children’s literature for the book titled “The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine: or, the Hithering, Thithering, Djinn'; (1971) (Marowski and Matuz, 3?). In 1976 he received the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for his book The Dead Father. His book Sixty Stories was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize all in 1982. Barthelme

  • The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Woman Warrior is a compelling novel written by Maxine Hong Kingston. The novel won National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction after receiving a great deal of praise from critics. In her novel, Kingston utilizes various literary elements to reveal the theme. Through the use of conflict, symbolism, and characterization, the message behind the theme becomes prominent to readers. The use of conflict gives readers a vivid screening of the role women played in the Chinese society. The symbols

  • Bettelheim and the Psychology of Children

    1902 Words  | 4 Pages

    child psychologist and a controversial writer of treatments of autism, stirred controversy through his life, especially through his famous “refrigerator mother” theory of the development of autism in children. However, he is mostly connected with his book The Uses of Enchantment, in which he described the link between the development of a child’s mind and the way fairy tales are portrayed. The two theories that he possesses over fairy tales and children and the development of autism are connected in

  • Elizabeth Bishop Roosters

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout history, poets have existed to create works that spark emotions from their readers. One poet in particular, who virtually mastered this technique, was Elizabeth Bishop. Born in 1911, Bishop grew to be a well-known poet. Her works gained national attention, and her writing style brought her fame. 	Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911. She began her young life in New England, and later moved to Nova Scotia in Canada after her father died and her mother was committed

  • The Woman Warrior

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior discusses her and her mother Brave Orchid's relationship. On the surface, the two of them seem very different however when one looks below the surface they are very similar. An example of how they superficially seem different is the incident at the drug store when Kingston is mortified at what her mother makes her do. Yet, the ways that they act towards others and themselves exemplifies their similarities at a deeper level. Kingston

  • Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior - No Name Woman

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior - No Name Woman The excerpt, "No Name Woman", from Maxine Hong Kingston's book, Woman Warrior, gives insight into her life as a Chinese girl raised in America through a tragic story of her aunt's life, a young woman raised in a village in China in the early 1900s. The story shows the consequences beliefs, taught by parents, have on a child's life. Kingston attempts to figure out what role the teachings of her parents should have on her life, a similar attempt

  • Macon's Change in Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    reflects his very nature to the tee. Macon is a 'travel writer for people who hate to travel' (Sheppard 78). Trying to make his readers feel at home away from home, Macon tells a traveler ?how to see as little of a city as possible? (Prescott 92). The book even tells where to find American restaurants in order to stay away from the change one would have to go through to eat foreign food. Incidentally, Macon often shortens his itinerary so that he can get home and back to the regular routine. At home

  • The Woman Warrior Analysis

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    For the last two weeks, I have partaken of a book not on the reading list submitted back in July: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. What Kingston has written exudes majesty plus lyricism to a point where readers cannot help sensing enchantment. Her writing doesn’t use advanced images for impressing anyone. The language she uses assists readers with seeing differentiated truthfulness kinds. Within one section, entitled “White Tigers,” Kingston explains how becoming trained in warriors’ ways

  • Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior

    1673 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the book, Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghost by Maxine Hong Kingston, she refers to most people as ghost. She considered anyone who is not Chinese as a ghost. Kingston labels herself as a Chinese-American and she labels herself as a ghost too. This term is used throughout the entire book. In the chapter Shaman, it is used more than any other chapter. Kingston has her own meaning and interpretation of ghosts. Ghosts to her are living spirits, such as the people she calls ghost in

  • Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, the young character tries to immerse herself into a different culture from her Chinese roots into an American. As a first generation immigrant living in the U.S she undergoes a need to adjust her life to match her peers. Kingston navigates the story surrounding a little girl trying to find her identity and the struggle to survive in a different culture. Kingston goes through the process of finding her own identity while indulging into two other