Why Literature Matters Author(s): Tim Gillespie Reviewed work(s): Source:

Why Literature Matters
Author(s): Tim Gillespie
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 83, No. 8, Literature, Queen of the Curriculum (Dec., 1994),
pp. 16-21
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/820324 .
Accessed: 01/10/2012 19:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
The English Journal.
http://www.jstor.org
Why
Literature Matters
TimGillespie
Practically
speaking,
doesanyone
need
literature?
Theauthor
saysyes.
16
hy should we teach literature?"is
the question on the floor.The pragmatists, clear-eyedand realistic,are
unsure literature has sufficient
value. I'mattendinga before-school
staff meeting of teachersfrom various disciplines to discuss restructuring the high school; morning
light sifts through the classroom
windows. Here as elsewhere, pragmatic demandsof the workplacedirect much of the discussion about school
reform.Literature,it strikes me, has a hard
time adaptingitself to this languageof "jobforce
literacy."
Here is the pragmatists'argument:No
one needs literature to be a productive
worker,competitivein the global economy
In fact, one can be highly successful in the
marketplacewith no knowledgewhatsoever
of literature;real-worldexamplesare plentiful. The importantreadingmatterof the future will be information,and the main
and inforreadingskillsinformation-gathering
is
more
Literature
rightly
mation-processing.
regarded as something like opera-an arcane art form, a spice of life, to be sure; a
seasoning.But not a main course. So, since
literatureis not essential,why should it be
such a majorpartof the curriculum?
My friend Gloria wonders how she is
going to revampher literaturecurriculumto
fit one of the school'snewly-stipulatedcareer
pathways."Ifthe theme aroundwhich I am
to organizeall my curriculumis Traveland
Tourism,"she asks, "how am I supposed to
get literaturein? What happens to Romeo
andJuliet?"
"Maybeyour kids can make a travelbrochure for Verona?"a colleague tentatively
suggests.
"The question is," says a pragmatist,
"who really needs to know about Shakespeare these days?This is an enthusiasm,a
leisure-time pursuit, but not a necessary
skill for the twenty-firstcentury"
Another English teacher earnestlytries
to make a claim for literatureas part of our
culturalheritage.As she talks,the words culturalliteracyleak fromher lips. Immediately,
other Englishteacherschallengeher:"Waita
minute!Whose culture?Which books?"We
quarrelabout the literarycanon, tradition,
exclusion, multiculturalism. Meanwhile, I
notice, the pragmatists,ever oriented to the
future, are looking at the clock and rolling
their eyes skyward. See? I imagine them
thinking, thesebookloverswill endlesslyargue
aboutwhichliteraryangelsfit on the headof a
pin; meanwhile,the real businessof the world
goes on unaffected. So, our own in-family
English teacher disagreement scuttles the
discussion.The meetingwinds down with a
shuffleof dissatisfaction.The issue of the literary canon, though critically important,
nonetheless eclipses the larger question,
without which it appearstrivial:Who really,
in this modern world of commerce, needs
literatureof any kind?
The questionstayson the floor.Teachers
startto leave. The firstperiodbell rings,and
students pour in. One drops her eightpound literatureanthologyat my feet with a
clunk.
WHO NEEDS LITERATURE?
In the months since that earlymorning
meeting, these questions stick with me:
Who really does need literature, anyway?
What'sit for?How do we justifyits centrality
to the Englishcurriculum?They are reasonable questions, I think. Next to claims for
helping studentslearn what it takes to get a
job and do meaningfullife-longwork, literature can appearextraneous.The discussion
pressed me to re-examinemy belief in the
importanceof literature.I want to have sensible answersto offerthe pragmatists.
Aftermuch reflection,I decided that the
most traditionalclaims for literatureare the
ones I am most eagerto defend. Primarily,I
believe literatureis justifiablein the modern
curriculumfor its contributionsto the cultivationof imaginationand of empathyTomy
way of thinking, these are crucial skills for
the twenty-first century, essential for our
thriving,pragmaticto the core.
Why, then, is literatureso easily devalued in the conversationabout communications skills of the future?Clearly,traditional
claims for the functions of literatureneed
December1994
reassertingand updating.Moreimportantly,
though, I worry that, in the words of the
literary characterPogo Possum, "We have
met the enemy,and he is us."That is, I fear
we too often neglect to addressin the contemporaryEnglishclassroomthose habitsof
imaginingand empathizingthat seem to me
literature'sgreatestbenefitand value.
Let me elaborate on these themes of
imagination, empathy, and teaching practices.
as weapons.Menckenled him to SinclairLewis' MainStreetand Babbitt,then to Theodore Dreiser's fiction, then to novel after
novel that revealed to him new ways of
thinking about his own circumstancesand
the wider world:
I hungeredforbooks,newwaysof
lookingandseeing.Itwasnot a matterof believingor disbelieving
whatI
read,butof feelingsomethingnew,of
beingaffectedby somethingthatmade
IMAGINATIONAND EMPATHY
PresidentBill Clinton often uses a line
thatregisterswith me as a teacher:"Children
can't be expected to live a life they can't
imagine." We rightly worry that many
youngsters'lives are circumscribedby poverty, discrimination,low expectations,cultural insularity,and other conditions that
may renderthem unable to see beyond the
limits of their immediate horizons. Literature does offer-inexpensively?a vision of
otherlives and othervistas.One of its potential benefits is to enlarge a reader'ssense
about the many possible ways to live. This
enlarged sense seems to me an important
part of our traditionalnationalethos. Hope
fora betterworld and beliefin the possibility
of re-makingoneselfor improvingone'ssituation breed optimism and elbow grease.
(Need I point out that these qualities have
economic implications?)We have rich testimony about this imaginativefunctionof literature.
In the lovely essay,"Ghostsand Voices:
Writingfrom Obsession"(1990), for example, SandraCisneroswritesof her childhood,
of checking out from her neighborhoodlibraryVirginiaLee Burton'sclassic TheLittle
House seven times in a row, of being en-
wasnothinglessthana senseof lifeitself.(272-74)
In a speech made at last year'sInternational ReadingAssociation conference and
reported in ReadingToday(1994), editor
WalterAnderson,who grew up in a violent,
impoverished environment, said his place
of solace and retreat was the library: "I
could open a book, and I could be anything.
I could be anywhere.I could be anyone...
I read myself out of poverty long before I
workedmyselfout of poverty"(1).
This is the firstargumentI would like to
offer for literature,its capacityto stimulate
the imagination,to offer differentperspectives and widerworldsthatthe young reader
can wander at leisure and experience in
safety, without pressure or judgment. We
read ourselvesimaginativelyinto other lives
and by this act expandthe pagesof our own.
If we keep following the track of our
imaginativeresponse, other argumentsfor
literatureemerge.As a reader,I readnot only
to find myself, I also read to lose myself.
Sweptalongby the magicof narrative,I give
myselfover to otherlives, landscapes,points
of view. In this experienceis the cultivation
of a deeper form of imagination,the empathetic identification with other humans,
tranced by books such as Island of the Blue
Dolphins and Alice in Wonderland.Through
those books, she says, she was transported
to other worlds, instructed about other people and possibilities, offered hopefulness,
and inspired to be a writer herself.
Richard Wright tells in BlackBoy (1945)
of being forced to pretend he was checking
out books for a white co-worker, since Jim
Crow laws didn't permit him to borrow the
books himself. In these forbidden works,
Wright found himself electrified by the fiery
writing of H. L. Mencken, which gave him
the idea that words could be effectively used
often people quite unlike ourselves.
Through literature, readers travel to different
locales, to the past and to the future, and
learn during their travels about other cultures and peoples. Literature offers students
diversity that their neighborhood may not.
As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has said, "No human culture is inaccessible to someone who
makes the effort to understand, to learn, to
inhabit another world" (1991, 1). And literature can be a form of this habitation.
The effort to understand advances what
Percy Bysshe Shelley called the "moral
imagination," a capacity to occupy another
EnglishJournal
the look of the world different. . . it
17
mind and feel the emotionalpulse of anotherheart."Moral"
is a trickyword here;
such
as
former
U.S.Secretary
of Edupeople
cationWilliamBennettare speakingmuch
latelyaboutthe moralvalueof stories,but I
hope the moralopportunitiesof literature
aren'toversimplified.Literaturedoes not
teach moralsin a didacticway; rather,it
moraldilemgivesus a chanceto experience
mas. And qualityliteraturedoes not oversimplifythe dilemmasof the world.Unlike
the glib,materialistic,
vision
quick-solution
of life offeredon much
literatureporTV,
trayslives thathave complicatedproblems
and toughchoices,andinvitesus to engage
withthem,to imaginelivingoutlife'svexing
dilemmas along with the characterswe
meet.By its truthfulportrayalof life'scomplex moralchoices,literaturedrawsus in,
us intoa story,andsummonsour
submerges
imaginativepowerto identifywith characters.Literature
thusmightbe oneantidoteto
the diseaseof disconnectionthatafflictsus.
Assaultingsomeone, tagginga wall with
spraypaint,sexuallyharassinganother,or
yellinga racialslurareall actsthatshowan
incapacityto empathize, to imagine another'sdeepestresponses,to considerthe
real consequencesof actionson others.In
the fractiousworldwe inhabit,empathyis a
much-neededskill,and literatureis a form
in whichwe canpracticethisskill.
valueof reading
literature.
So,evenwhenthe
contestwasover,I keptluggingaroundthat
box.
Therewasmuchto admirein those121
the ampledisplayof sostories,particularly
Lotsof the young
craft.
phisticatedwriting
authorshadmasteredthe trickof writingattention-gettingleads, high-impactbeginnings that grab readersby the collarand
yanktheminto the story.Manystorieswere
ripe with sensoryimagesand detaileddescriptions. Many had snappy dialogue.
Someone,I thought,has been talkingwith
thesestudentsaboutliterarytechnique.
Yetin all thisexerciseof writerlycraft,I
felta kindof emptiness.Whatseemedmissing fromtoo manyof the storieswas that
rareexperienceof gettinginsidethe skinof
anotherhumanbeing.WhenI thinkof the
fictionI love, I think of vivid characters,
fromJaneEyreto MarieKashpaw,
YuryZhiFinn
to
Huck
to
Will
vago
Tweedy,Scoutto
Setheto JuneWoo.ThesearepeopleI have
come to know well. In theirengagingstories, I learn somethingabout them, and,
throughthem,othersandmyself.A handful
of the studentswho enteredthe contestdid
in theirstocreatesuchabsorbing
characters
ries.I won'tsoon forgetthe dyingfarmerin
one student'sstorywho leaveshis homeand
startshitchhikingwith his dog to see the
countryin springtimebloomone last time.
And I won'tsoon forgetthe young girl in
CONNECTIONS
TO THECLASSROOM another
story,livinga constrictedlife as a
The fuzzyrelationship
betweenmy beservanton a turn-of-the-century
Oregon
lief in this empatheticfunctionof literature
of escape to the nearby
ranch,
dreaming
and my classroominstructioncame into
townto the onlylifethatseemsa liberation,
clearerfocusforme lastfall.AfterI agreedto
thatof a barmaid.Forthegiftof allowingme
contestfor exhelp judge a fiction-writing
to cometo knowandunderstand
theselives,
ceptionalhigh schoolwritersin my state,I I was
exceedinglygratefulto thesestudents;
foundon my frontporcha cardboardbox
thiswasthe delightofjudgingthecontest.
filledwith 121 manuscripts,averagingabout
ten pages apiece. For the next two weeks, I
kept the box in my car. Wherever I went,
whenever I could, I read stories: during
lunch break,in the quiet of late night, waiting for soccer practiceto finish.
Reading all this student fiction offered
equal parts delight and dismay,and caused
me to ask myself againone of the firstquestions of the educationalendeavor:Why are
we doing this?What on earthis the value of
having students write fiction, or poetry, or
any form of literature?And this, of course,
sent me back to my ruminationsabout the
18
The dismay came from the shortageof
such vivid charactersand what I felt was an
insufficient exploration in many of the
pieces of characters'motives, complexities,
and changes.What I mostly found was nonstop action, special effects,and greatgobs of
violence in many forms. Charactersin various storieswere:shot, knifed,hit by a truck,
killed in an earthquake,attacked by killer
midgets, beaten with an ax and fireplace
poker, bashed with a sledgehammer,
stabbedwith a broomstick,eaten by crocodiles, conked on the head with a gravestone,
rippedup by a grizzlybear,and on and on. I
December1994
culknow we live in a violence-drenched
confront
have
to
I
writers
and
believe
ture,
the givenworldanddealwiththeirdeepest
fearsanddesires,but I wasstilltakenaback
by all the violence.My surprisewas less
aboutthe quantitythan aboutthe poorlyimaginedqualityof muchof it. Mostof the
mayhemin these storieswas unnecessary,
unearned,emotionallyflat, painless,and
lackingconsequence,likewhatwe see in so
manymoviesandTVshows.
Readingthisworkfromsomeof thebest
writersin mystatecausedme to re-thinkmy
canenlargeourcapacity
claimthatliterature
forempathy,thatreadingfiction-and writing it-offers us a chanceto imaginehow
anotherhumanmight live, think, dream,
and feel.Believingfictionto be a meansfor
practicingmoralengagement,I was concernedafterreadingthissmallsampleof stories.I wishedmoreof theseyoungwriters'
skillswereasreandempathetic
imaginative
finedas theirtechnicalskills.
PERFECTION
VS.
TECHNICAL
MORALINSIGHT
My thinkingon theseissueswas deepened when I re-readRalphEllison'sessay
"Twentieth
CenturyFictionand the Black
Maskof Humanity"
(1964)notlongafterhe
died.In the essay,Ellisoncriticizesmodernist writerswho seek "atechnicalperfection
ratherthan a moralinsight"(38) and frets
about excessive absorptionwith literary
techniqueandwhathe seesin moderncriticismas a confusionof technicalsophistication with significance.This intriguedme,
comingfromthepen of a greatliterarytechauthorof thesophistinicianandinnovator,
Man.Yet,I
catedandexperimental
Invisible
mused,Ellison'snovelspeakseloquentlyto
me not becauseof his masteryof innovative
form and technique, but ratherbecause of
the movingly-renderedhuman being who
calls out from his invisibility,tryingdesperatelyto be known.
This threadof thoughtled me to consider my own teaching.I looked at some of the
writing resourcebooks on my shelf, and I
looked at my own habitsas a teacherof creative writing. The sight was striking: both
tended to stress,in Ellison'swords,technical
perfectionover moral insight. That is, more
time was spent on writing techniques than
on the human issues in students'stories. I
realized that my students need more than
EnglishJournal
just hints on techniquewhen they are exwith fiction.Tipson writinga
perimenting
catchylead,usingsensorydetails,or "showing insteadof telling"maybe lessimportant
to young fictionwritersthan supportfor
imaginingwhat might be motivatinganotherperson,payingcloserattentionto huand portraying
life in its
man interactions,
I need to focuson the peofullcomplexity.
ple in my students'fiction,notjuston technique.
Don'tgetme wrong;I lovethecraft-talk
of writing,andI enjoysharingauthors'lore
with students.Youngwritersareinterested
in colorfullanguage,dialogue,richdescription, invitingleads,all thatgood stuff.Yet
craftin writingmust servecontent;techniqueoughtto be employednot forits own
sake but in the serviceof some truththe
writeris pursuing.Whena fictionwriteris
usingflashytricksbut lacksfeelingfor the
it feelslike manipulation
to the
characters,
a
of
lack
without
reader,
commitment,
style
substance.Wemissmuchin ourteachingif
we don'taddressdeeperreasonsbehindthe
devicesof writing.Forexample,I havetold
studentsin pastclassesto "describe
characters using lavish details,"as if this were
merelya ruleto followor anotherrhetorical
device for the writer'sbag of tricks.It is
in their
more,of course.Offeringcharacters
is notjuststraining
fully-detailed
complexity
foreffect,it is tenderingrespect.Totreatour
characters
is to makea generous
respectfully
effortto get to know themwell, the same
way we show respectin our nonfictional
life.
walking-around
WhatI wantto learnas a teacherof fiction-writing,then, is how to help young
authorscultivatethisspiritof generosityInsteadofjust teachingcraft,I needto talkto
Unlike
theglib,
materialistic,
quick-solution
visionof life
offeredon
muchTV,
literature
portrayslives
thathave
complicated
problemsand
toughchoices.
them in ways that challenge them to learn
more about their characters:Why did that
characterdo that? What's motivatingher?
What do we know about her background,
her dreams,her fears,her wishes? I would
like to discipline myself so my first responses to a piece of fictionwould centeron
the qualitiesof empathyand understanding:
What'sat the heart of this human you are
workingto portray?And if you do decide to
knock aroundor kill off this character,how
will you make it so we all feel the true hurt?
19
A skillat
ormal
iterary
analysismay
be usefulfor a
few college
courses,butit
is nota highly
marketable
skill,nora
cornerstone
of
workplace
competence,
norsomething
mostfolks
needas
theywalk
aroundin
theiradult
lives.
LITERATURE
AND HUMAN
EXPERIENCE
All this thinking about writing finally
brought me back around to literature.I'm
ready to talk to the pragmatistsnow. Here's
what I will say:
The callingof literatureis to explorehuman experience in all its dimensions and
possibilities.Literaturedeals with our most
pressing concerns-family, death, religion,
love, good and evil, destiny, will, justice,
character,courage-issues not oftencovered
in an Applied Communicationsor Business
Writingunit. Informationmost often represents humanexperiencein abstractand generalized forms: facts, statistics, data.
Literaturerepresentshuman experience in
the very specific individualterms of a story
or poem.
Furthermore,literatureoffersa different
form of learningthanjust processinginformation;it requiresus to experience,to participate. Works of literature are not just
abouthuman issues; the power of literature
is that it makes issues come alive for the
reader. Think of the experience so many
young readershave with Anne Frank'sdiary.
Whatis learnedof the Holocaustin thatlittle
book is learnedin a powerful,moving, profoundlyintimateway.Withchillinglyevil insight, Hitler's propaganda minister Josef
Goebbelssaid thata singledeathis a tragedy,
a million deaths a statistic. We must, of
course, confront the statistics about the
Holocaust, we must know the information
thatmillions of lives were taken.Butto fully
understand,we also mustfeel the tragedyof
single deaths, experiencethe loss in a way
we can shed a tear over, put faces on those
numbers.Thatis the functionof literature.
Manyyounger readers,it seems to me,
already know this. As a parent and sometime teacher of elementary schoolers, I am
often amazed to see what can happen when
avid young readers plunge into literature.
They may cry when the dogs die in Where
the RedFern Growsor the father comes home
in Sounder. They feel in their marrowbones
the awful injustice of racism when they read
Rollof
Hear My Cry.They share pioThunder, with Laura Ingalls Wilder
neer hardships
and rehearse the demands of friendship with
Katherine Paterson. They care desperately
about the fate of characters, laugh out loud,
gasp, sigh, get scared, or shiver as they read.
20
This is the way we want studentsto experience literature,a way that allows them to
exercisetheirempatheticimaginations.
Think, then, about how literature is
often taughtin high school:Outlinethe plot.
Identify the theme. Detail the setting. List
main charactersand supportingcharacters.
Commenton the structureof the work.Note
descriptiveand supportingdetails.Analyze
the mood. Look for certain literary techniques: irony,symbolism,author'ssignature
style. Considerthe narrativepoint of view.
Definethis work in termsof the SevenMajor
Plots, the Seven Forms of Ambiguity,Four
Universal Themes, Kohlberg's Stages,
Bloom'sTaxonomy,whatever.Writeup some
biographicalinfo on the author.Answerthe
questionsat the end of the selection.Makea
list of new vocabularywords. And on and
on. I am as guiltyas anyone.
Jumpingtoo quicklyinto these kinds of
follow-up activities, we miss the boat, I
think. Certainlythere are formal and aesthetic issues to explorein all worksof literature, and I want my students to have a
vocabularyof literaryanalysis.But if that is
my primaryor only instructionalconcern,
the pragmatistsare completelyjustified in
questioning the value of the literaturecurriculum, their criticismcorrectlyaimed. A
skill at formalliteraryanalysismay be useful
for a few college courses, but it is not a
highly marketableskill, nor a cornerstoneof
workplacecompetence,nor somethingmost
folksneed as theywalk aroundin theiradult
lives.
If the heartof literatureis its exploration
of human experience,considerationof the
formaland aestheticpropertiesof a work of
literature must be secondary to consideration of the social values and ethical dilemmas presented by the work. Bertolt
Brecht once said he didn't want people to
leave his plays thinking about the theater, he
wanted them to leave his plays thinking
about the world. In like fashion, our students want to use literature to think about
the world, not just to think about the formal
aspects of literature. To explore the deepest
human concerns is why people read literature, and why they write it. That is what
enthusiastic younger readers know, and
that'swhat we don't want to stifle in our high
school students by focusing too soon or too
much on technical elements of literature.
December1994
of Storiesis CommonThreadin WideThe skill our studentsmost need to learn "Sharing
1994. ReadLiteracyConference."
Ranging
of
in
this
fromliterature
go-getter
pragmatic
11.5
1.
ingToday (April/May):
thema societyis how to betterunderstand
and
Programs
Stotsky,Sandra.1989. "Literature
selvesandothers.
of Civic
theDevelopment
TheLeafIdentity."
It behoovesus then,to startourdiscuslet88 (1): 17-21.
sion of everyworkof literature
open to the Wright,Richard.1945. BlackBoy.New York:
Harper& Row
human issues dramatizedin it. Our first
questionsoughtn'tto be about form,vo- TimGillespie,pastpresidentof the OregonCouncil
or literarymoves.Wehaveto give of Teachersof Englishandco-directorof theOregon
cabulary,
WritingProjectat Lewisand ClarkCollege,teaches
studentsa chance first to chew over the at
LakeOswegoHighSchoolin Oregon.
the questions
quandariesof the characters,
of rightandwrongtheyface,justifiableand
or antisocial
.
actions,admirable
unjustifiable
11I.
.v..E. .$.A.O
qualities,choicesand limitations.(In this
AXat~~ eflv
We......
way, as both SandraStotskyand Robert
Coleshavepointedout,civicsandsocialinW
....................
.
world
.w .de .$......
s
i~th...
quirycanbecomethe provinceof literature
it
is
of
studies
as
much
as
the
social
study
In our classrooms,
we haveto
teflctbn~t0$
th.Th~~h I~ss ~
X.
curriculum.)
mainattractions,
the opporuse literature's
~oo~r~ye*s pbi~iXon
tunityto tryoutotherlivesandconnectwith
o ....p
.........,.....
. ........
otherhumansthroughtheexerciseof imagi~
Tenys~n~
t41
e wh
nationandempathy
Tosumup, themainclaimforliterature
thatI wantto offerto myworkforce-oriented
to learn
colleaguesis this:Weneedliterature
to get along.Literature
andlife convergein
tT~1ox
thefieldof humanrelationships.
Whatchar1NT~cON
~
.......
...
E
acterizes quality literature-refusal to
or
to
the
stereotype generalize, fidelity
.OE~tLO..........M
whole complicatedtruthin all its breadth
..$.........nb..
9 .....
and subtlety,energyandinventiveness,
eloquence,payingcarefulattention,discomfort
.Nahsi
.6..t .......e
at patanswers,anda generosity
andsympawith
others-also characterizes
thy
thoughtful life.Thegreatdangersof ourfindesiecle
theinabilityto
period-nihilism,barbarism,
the
of
Th~p i~.......
.~
......we
acknowledge humanity othersoutside
xr~mbev
(o~
.N~W
~ar~seIX.
one's own tribe, cynicism,boredom-are
perilsliterature
attemptsto combat.
So let's be clear-eyed,realistic,pragmatic.Who needs literature?We all do.
WorksCited
Sandra.1990."Ghosts
andVoices:
WritCisneros,
.9:
eve, t~a ynti4g
ST...
.......
....
......y
...t ......
Ui . na,
MexicanAmerican
Literaing fromObsession."
ture.NewYork:
Harcourt
Brace
Jovanovich.
and
Coles,Robert.1989. TheCallofStories:
Teaching
theMoralImagination.
Boston:HoughtonMifflin.
Ellison,Ralph.1964. "TwentiethCenturyFiction
and the Black Mask of
Shadow
Humanity."
andAct.New York:Random
House.
or
Gates, Henry Louis,Jr. 1991. "'Authenticity,'
the Lesson of Little Tree."New YorkTimes
BookReview(24 November):1.
Journal
English
T61801,1.1*iau~
p e.r.h.
~*
~i~
.........
21