Tell Me Your Favorite American Books

The library associated with the Valenciana campus of the Universidad de Guanajuato, the Biblioteca Luis Rios, contains a narrow section of books from United States literature - perhaps just a hundred or so books in all. The spines of the books reveal many of the big titles of some of America's most famous authors: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Lousia May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Jack London, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner - just one or to works by each author - and then several copies of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Most of the works are Spanish translations; some are in English.

Through the Fulbright-García Robles program, I have the opportunity to donate some books to my host institution. I already have one set of books to donate, related to the seminar I am teaching here, "The Literature of the West in the United States." The books are:
The Professor's House by Willa Cather (1925)
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1971)
The Chinchilla Farm by Judith Freeman (1989)
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (1992)
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams (1992)
The New Encyclopedia of the American West edited by Howard Lamar (1998)
I chose these books for the quality of their writing, the trends and preoccupations they represent for United States literature in general, and - in particular - for the way these regional narratives span the geography of both the U.S. West and Mexico, prompting a dialogue between the places and the cultures as each narrative shapes its own mythology that challenges conventions and stereotypes. They all push the borderlands.

But I can choose a few more books to give to the university. I would like to donate the English version and a Spanish translation of each book.

So, without limiting the focus to a particular region or time period, what five books best represent United States literature? What American books should beckon readers in Guanajuato? It's an overwhelming question. I ask for your help. Please post a comment or email me (jdavidson@csi.edu) with your nominations for five U.S. books to donate to the Universidad de Guanajuato library. I will need to order the books by April 15. Thank you, friends and fellow readers!