Hungry Mind Review's
100 Best 20th-Century American
Books of Fiction and Nonfiction
What the Hungry Mind Review had to
say about its list:
The books were chosen by five writers: Mary Moore Easter, Heid E.
Erdrich, Bill Holm, David Mura, and George Rabasa, under the direction
of Bart Schneider, editor of the Hungry Mind Review, and J.
Otis Powell of The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis
The Hungry Mind Review list provides a compelling
alternative to the Modern Library's selection of "100 Best Novels
published in the English language since 1900," announced last July.
Although the Modern Library list was criticized for including only
six books by nonwhite writers, only nine books by women, and very
few books published after 1960, it initiated a lively national
discussion. The HMR list reflects a far more realistic race
and gender balance, and includes a good number of contemporary
books. Our list is however limited to books written by Americans
While the Modern Library list is restricted to novels, the
Hungry Mind Review includes distinguished books of nonfiction
and collections of short fiction. "Opening the list to nonfiction
makes sense in a literary century that has witnessed the blurring of
the line between fiction and nonfiction," according to Hungry
Mind Review editor Bart Schneider. "It's thrilling to have James
Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, as well as the
autobiographies of Malcolm X and Alice B. Toklas, on this list,"
Schneider adds. "Essential 20th-century writers like James Baldwin,
Joan Didion, and Gore Vidal, who each have collections of nonfiction
included on the list, are commonly thought to have done their best
writing in the essay form."
- Henry Adams. The Education of Henry Adams (1918)
- James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941)
- Dorothy Allison. Bastard out of Carolina (1992)
- Rudolfo Anaya. Bless Me Ultima (1972)
- Sherwood Anderson. Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
- Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970)
- Gloria Anzaldúa. Borderlands/La Frontera: The
New Mestiza (1987)
- James Baldwin. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
- James Baldwin. The Price of the Ticket: Collected
Nonfiction (1985)
- Edward Ball. Slaves in the Family (1998)
- Saul Bellow. Herzog (1964)
- Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky (1948)
- William Burroughs. Naked Lunch (1959)
- Truman Capote. In Cold Blood (1966)
- Raymond Carver. Cathedral (1983)
- Willa Cather. O Pioneers! (1913)
- Willa Cather. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
- John Cheever. Collected Stories (1978)
- Sandra Cisneros. House on Mango Street (1984)
- Don DeLillo. White Noise (1985)
- Joan Didion. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
- Vine Deloria Jr.. Custer Died for Your Sins (1983)
- John Dos Passos. U.S.A (1930)
- Theodore Dreiser. An American Tragedy (1925)
- W.E.B. DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
- Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (1952)
- Louise Erdrich. Love Medicine (1984)
- William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury (1926)
- William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying (1930)
- William Faulkner. Go Down, Moses (1940)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby (1925)
- M.F.K. Fisher. The Art of Eating (1954)
- Francisco Goldman. The Ordinary Seaman (1997)
- Alex Haley. Roots (1976)
- Joseph Heller. Catch-22 (1961)
- Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises (1926)
- Ernest Hemingway. The Short Stories (1938)
- Michael Herr. Dispatches (1977)
- Chester Himes. My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography (1976)
- Linda Hogan. Mean Spirit (1990)
- bell hooks. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1982)
- Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
- Henry James. The Wings of the Dove (1902)
- LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). Blues People: Negro Music in White
America (1963)
- Jack Kerouac. On the Road (1957)
- Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
- Jamaica Kincaid. Annie John (1983)
- Maxine Hong Kingston. Woman Warrior (1976)
- Jerzy Kosinski. The Painted Bird (1976)
- Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
- Li-Young Lee. The Winged Seed (1995)
- Sinclair Lewis. Babbitt (1922)
- Cormac McCarthy. The Crossing (1994)
- Carson McCullers. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
- Norman Mailer. The Naked and the Dead (1948)
- Bernard Malamud. The Magic Barrel (1958)
- Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
- Rollo May. Love and Will (1969)
- Thomas Merton. The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
- Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer (1934)
- N. Scott Momaday. House Made of Dawn (1968)
- Wright Morris. Field of Vision (1956)
- Toni Morrison. Sula (1973)
- Toni Morrison. Song of Solomon (1977)
- Toni Morrison. Beloved (1987)
- Toni Morrison. Jazz (1992)
- Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita (1958)
- John G. Neihardt. Black Elk Speaks (1932)
- Flannery O'Connor. A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955)
- Charles Olson. Call Me Ishmael (1947)
- Tillie Olson. Tell Me a Riddle (1961)
- Jon Okada. No-No Boy (1977)
- Grace Paley. Collected Stories (1994)
- Walker Percy. The Moviegoer (1961)
- Katherine Anne Porter. Flowering Judas and Other Stories (1930)
- Thomas Pynchon. Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
- Adrienne Rich. On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979)
- Philip Roth. Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
- J.D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
- May Sarton. At Seventy (1984)
- Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony (1977)
- Isaac B. Singer. The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis
Singer (1982)
- Gertrude Stein. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
- John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath (1937)
- William Styron. Sophie's Choice (1979)
- James Thurber. A Thurber Carnival (1945)
- Jean Toomer. Cane (1923)
- Mark Twain. Letters from the Earth (1962)
- John Updike. Rabbit, Run (1960)
- Gore Vidal. The United States: Essays 1952-1992 (1993)
- Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
- Alice Walker. The Color Purple (1982)
- Robert Penn Warren. All the Kings Men (1946)
- Nathaneal West. The Day of the Locust (1939)
- John Edgar Wideman. Philadelphia Fire (1990)
- William Carlos Williams. In the American Grain (1925)
- Edmund Wilson. To the Finland Station (1940)
- Thomas Wolfe. You Can't Go Home Again (1941)
- Richard Wright. Native Son (1940)
- Wakako Yamauchi. Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994)
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