Library Project “Reading America”
About the project
As part of the 250th anniversary of the United States, this small library project brings together a range of book recommendations that reflect diverse perspectives on “America.” In collaboration with the library, these selections from the American Studies staff at HHU are presented on a centrally located shelf: not as a definitive canon, but as an invitation to explore, question, and engage. What do “Americanists” consider crucial works to engage with their field of study?
The books gathered here span genres, periods, and voices, from literary classics to contemporary works and from academic texts to popular culture. Each recommendation offers a particular lens on the United States, highlighting experiences, histories, and imaginaries that shape, complicate, or challenge what might be considered “quintessentially American.”
We invite you to browse, read, and discover new viewpoints. This collection is meant as a starting point for reflection and conversation, culminating in a joint reading event at the Central Library, where selected themes and impressions will be shared and discussed. Every week, a new book will be added to the shelf.
Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) traces a web of characters over several decades and generations, hunting fame and constantly remaking themselves. It incorporates many different styles, voices, and media, strongly referencing music(ality) and pop culture, managing to capture that restless American lifestyle, built on change, ambition, and the belief in finally, eventually, „making it." As much as it is about that dream and idea of „Americanness", it is also about where they can take people and at what cost. (Franziska Wolf)
James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
This short essay, for me, encapsulates the difficulty of America’s self-understanding as a democratic nation with one of the greatest metaphors of all time: Bread. What kinds of intellectual, societal, and physical nourishment does a nation need to thrive? While written in 1963, it reads as an all-time classic that couldn’t be truer today. (Svenja Engelmann-Kewitz)
Paul Auster: Moon Palace
Set in New York City in the turbulent 1960s, in this multigenerational novel Marco Stanley Fogg by chance uncovers a family history full of unbelievable stories and dark secrets. While learning about the lives of his long-lost father and grandfather and eventually retracing their travels across the continent, Marco also renegotiates his relation to America and the significance of its history for his own identity, from the Native Americans to the Wild West to the Moon landing. (Clara Petino)
Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad
Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad makes the reality of slavery in the 19th century tangible. Opposed to dry facts, history is mediated through the emotionally charged perspective and story of the protagonist Cora. Yet, the book does not just offer a glimpse into the past but invites to dwell on contemporary dilemmas such as racism, freedom, and social inequality. Trigger warning: please bear in mind that this no easy read due to its topic. (Marie von Lobenstein)
Louise Erdrich: Love Medicine
This novel, which made the author famous overnight, is exciting, sometimes heartbreaking, and complex at the same time. A plurality of indigenous voices from various generations tells you what it means to live on a reservation in North Dakota. The plot follows the members of the Kashpaw and Lamartine clans over the period from 1934 to 1984. Trauma, (internalized) colonial oppression, storytelling, indigenous myths, love and jealousy, grotesque and sometimes funny adventures – Louise Erdrich brings all of that together in a breathtaking masterpiece. (Georg Schiller)