Social Justice in Fiction: A Reading List
This week’s Riot Recommendation is sponsored by One Glorious Ambition: The Compassionate Crusade of Dorothea Dix, A Novel by Jane Kirkpatrick.
Growing up in household full of pain and tragedy, Dorothea Dix thought she was destined for nothing more than teaching and to raising her two younger brothers. She opened her first school for girls when she was fifteen and by twenty-three, was a best-selling author living an orderly and disciplined Boston life. But a visit to a prison to teach Sunday School to women in 1841 launched a new path for Dorothea, one that would turn her personal hardships into great strides for the less fortunate. Dorothea fought for the lives of those with mental illness, the poor and prisoners. Her political savvy, rare amongst women in her time, challenged those who made the rules in the almshouses, debtor prisons and private homes where mentally ill people were often chained and forgotten. Those tragic souls changed Dorothea, too, illuminating the path of peace within her own suffering and bring her “a happiness which goes with you.”
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Inspired by Jane Kirkpatrick’s fictional account of activist Dorothea Dix’s life, we asked you to share your favorite works of fiction that feature social justice and characters who are deeply moved or take action to correct injustice. Here’s a collection of your recommendations from Facebook, Twitter, and the comments.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Eventide and Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Help by Kathryn Sockett
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Mudbound and When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Little Brother and Homeland by Cory Doctorow
The Lorax, The Sneetches, and Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Night by Elie Weisel
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Mr. g by Alan Lightman
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Next by Michael Crichton
Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands by Susan Carol McCarthy
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingslover
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Traveling Light by Katrina Kittle
July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn
The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
It’s a pretty long list, but I’m sure a few titles were left off. What would you add?
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