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Zoot Suit was written by Luis Valdez, a Mexican-American playwright and director who is widely known as the father of Chicano theater. It weaves together the story of the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trials with the Zoot Suit riots, both of which took...

Because of Winn-Dixie is Kate DiCamillo's first novel, and it catapulted her into the top category of children's writers working today. The book has won a number of prestigious awards, including a Newberry Honor Distinction in 2001. The New York...

A graphic novel by cartoonist David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (2009) tells the story of the eponymous Asterios Polyp, a professor from Cornell University in New York. After a sudden lightning strike destroys his apartment, Polyp takes up...

Director Rachel Lears began to work on the film that became Knock Down the House the day after Donald J. Trump won the office of the President of the United States. The film follows four Democratic candidates: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New...

The White Helmets is a short documentary film released in 2016, following the daily lives of the Syrian Civil Defence, who are nicknamed the White Helmets. Each of these men is a volunteer who becomes part of a team that focuses on medical...

Satellites is a play by critically acclaimed playwright Diana Son. Commissioned by the Public Theater, it was presented in the 2004 “New Work Now!” which recognized works from emerging or established playwrights. The play opened on June 18, 2006....

In early 1818, Percy and Mary Shelley set off for Italy with their two children, along with Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron's mistress, and Allegra, Byron's daughter. By December, Shelley found himself in dire straits. His first wife Harriet had...

On May 29, 1851, Sojourner Truth attended a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio. She approached the speaker’s platform and asked “May I say a few words?” The speech she gave that day was transcribed by Marius Robinson, a reporter in the...

The 2000 Japanese dystopian thriller Battle Royale was based on the novel of the same name that was written in 1999 by Japanese journalist Koushun Takami. It follows the story of a group of junior high schoolers who live in a Japan governed by a...

Directed by Hassan Fazili, Midnight Traveler is, at its core, a documentary about refugees -- most prominently about the films director, Hassan Fazili. After the terrorist group The Taliban puts a bounty out on Fazili and his family's head, they...

Written as a series of periodical essays from 1867 to 1868 and published in Cornhill Magazine, Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy was collected as a book in 1869. In the book, Arnold examines Victorian culture in England. He questions how...

Love Actually is a 2003 British romantic comedy film written and directed by Richard Curtis. The film follows a group of young adults in London, set during the Christmas season. Following ten couples, the film chronicles their romantic and...

There are only three characters in The Drawer Boy, a two-act play by Michael Healey. It is set in Clinton, Ontario, in 1972; the village is a small community that was founded in 1831 close to Lake Huron. The play's plot centers around the owners...

“Diving into the Wreck” is the titular poem of Adrienne Rich’s seventh collection of poetry, which won the National Book Award in 1974. Written at the height of the second-wave feminist movement, this collection is considered one of Rich’s most...

The Dunciad is a scathing work of satire and critique written by Alexander Pope in the mock-heroic style. It was published three separate times, the first edition containing three books, and the final two editions containing an added fourth book,...

In The House at Sugar Beach (2008), author Helene Cooper takes a look at the troubled and violent past of Liberia, the country which she hails from. Particularly, she examines the effects of the 1980 military coup d'état had on her country. Partly...

Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” is a haunting short story published in the New Yorker in 1980. Ozick later included it with a novella about the main character, Rosa, in a single volume also entitled The Shawl.

Ozick is Jewish but did not experience...

It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmas fantasy film from 1946, written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Frank Capra, among others. Indeed, many people contributed to the script, including Dorothy Parker, Dalton Trumbo, Marc Connelly, and...

Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" is a short story about four men stranded in a small rowboat in rough seas after their ship capsizes. The men spend over thirty hours in the boat until they wash ashore only to discover that their strongest rower has...

The Devil in The White City, published by Erik Larson in 2003, is a factual account of incidents that occurred in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. Larson weaves the story of the Chicago World’s Fair overseer, Daniel Burnham, and his...

This collection of short stories by Peter Carey is set in a post-Marxist utopia in which obesity is frowned upon and considered counterrevolutionary. Titled The Fat Man in History (1993), Carey asks a number of important questions relevant to the...

British author J.K. Rowling said that the idea for the Harry Potter series “fell into her head” in 1990 while she was riding a train from Manchester to London without a pen to write it down. While she started to write it that evening, her progress...

12 Angry Men is a film from 1957, directed by Sidney Lumet, with a screenplay by Reginald Rose, adapted from his teleplay. It looks at a jury of 12 men as they decide the fate of an 18-year-old defendant who is on trial for the murder of his...

Totaling 272 pages, "Foreign Soil" and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction. Set all across the world -- from Africa, to London, to the United States, to the West Indies, to Australia -- this collection gives a voice to those without one...