8 Books that Represent “My America”

The first edition of Didion’s The White Album has a simple white cover adorned with huge red and blue text. That’s the edition that I picked up at a bookstore before flying to Seattle to embark on a road trip with a friend down the West Coast. I do this nerdy thing I like to call “thematic reading” whenever I’m really excited to go somewhere or do something—it’s kind of like scouring travel guidebooks but way more interesting and much less practical. It lends context for a place, at least temporarily, until you can replace it with your own experience there. This is the book that accompanied me on the cross-country plane ride and in the passenger seat of my friend’s boyfriend’s car, read against a backdrop of coastline and redwood and wine country. The furthest we made it was Berkley, so my idea of LA is still Didion’s: Black Panther meetings and Charles Manson testimonies, static images of paranoia and chaos, emblematic of 1960s America. - Meg Miller

This American classic coming-of-age tale centers around Francie Nolan, a young, sensitive reader living in the slums of Williamsburg, Brooklyn (oh, how times have changed). I read this book, I think, a bit too early to fully understand it, so when I encountered it again in high school, it was a much more pleasant and satisfying experience. As far as I’m concerned, it should be a staple.

I heard about this book when I went to a week-long brainiac camp at West Point the summer before senior year of high school. Being exposed to so much military and government over the course of a week, it was just what I needed to re-set my brain. It’s hilarious and reminds me that though our system isn’t always the best, it’s better than everything else out there. And though we fight like hell to make it better, it’s OK to make fun of ourselves now and then, even with that which we hold most sacred: our own democracy. – Kevin Myers

Not an easy read but a marvelous one. The story of the Bundren family on their journey to bury the family matriarch, Addie, is told from alternating points of view that expose and explain the character’s lives and the story of this family. The way it is told-- the beautiful knotty language that demands attention be paid and the immersion into the psyches of each character in a way that was completely new when it was written -- is quintessentially American not just because it is about the South, and nowhere in the world is like the South, but because no one but an American could write it. On reading lists for years it should be on everyone’s book shelf too. – Suzanne Donahue

Some consider it “the great American novel.” The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his powerful love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale that has been essential reading since it was published.

Read the full review here.

This book emphasized to me that America very often is not just the space we occupy, but the histories, traditions, and cultures we/our ancestors brought with us to this space, whether 10 years ago or 300 years ago. America is informed by a multitude of traditions from around the world, and how we negotiate those traditions to form the American ideal is an exciting and fascinating process. – Etinosa Agbonlahor

I love the whole series, but On The Banks of Plum Creek is my stand-out favorite. As a child, I wanted to be Laura Ingalls, which is a testament to how charmingly appealing she made the homesteading of this country by non-indigenous people seem. As an adult, I know better, but I still admire the Ingalls’ family’s strength, love, curiosity, bravery, and adaptability as they traversed life as early settlers. Humble, complicated roots. . . that is America to me. - Allison Tyler

Few writers working today have the narrative depth and complexity as Philip Roth. And it is at an intellectual high-point with The Plot Against America. The novel follows a working class Jewish-American family during the eve of World War II. Unlike the actual events surrounding America’s involvement, Roth constructs an alternate reality where Charles Lindbergh, the famous pilot and Nazi sympathizer, climbs to political prominence and, in a juicy moment of American politicking, succeeds in beating the incumbent and well-respected Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. Thus emerges an America more aligned with the policies of the Third Reich than with the allies, and becomes all the more troublesome for a Jewish family targeted by an increasingly hostile state. The vividness of America’s pogroms is terrifying and Roth delights in his ability to make the most absurd of situations real and doubtlessly convincing. It is perhaps an unusual choice when asked what book defines America for me, but Roth is fully invested in the American consciousness and his version could only have been written by someone who cares deeply about what America means and how best to relay its people’s perspective. I’ve never been one to shy from controversy and Roth, I think, embellishes the American spirit better than others who merely claim ownership of America without any foresight into why or for what purpose. - Pronoy Sarkar