9 AP Literature Books We Abandoned
Book recommendations are common currency in English teacher communities: we’re always looking for books that our students will love or that will lead to engaging classroom discussions.
But we don’t always talk about the other books, the ones that don’t last, the ones we try for varying lengths of time and then replace. Especially when those books are “classics”: no one wants to confess to not teaching a beloved book in a room (or Internet group) full of English teachers. Well, no judgment here. Some books just don’t work for your students (and/or you).
We replaced the AP Literature books we’re sharing today for a variety of reasons: sometimes our students hated the book, and it wasn’t worth the battle. Sometimes the book was more challenging than we needed it to be to accomplish our purpose. Sometimes the book had content we just didn’t feel comfortable forcing our students to read. Sometimes we needed a break. And sometimes our feelings about the importance and appropriateness of a novel changed based on wider cultural conversations.
These AP Literature books are worth sharing, too. We would still consider any one of them worthy of reading and assigning: we chose them for a reason, after all. And in a different context, we might not have had the same issues; our district served a large percentage of first-generation American students, English learners, and students who qualified for free and reduced lunch. But it’s helpful, as teachers, to share what didn’t work for us, whether it’s to help other teachers with similar classes or to help those who do teach the novels think about the potential pitfalls and how to avoid them.
So without further ado, here are the . . .
9 AP Literature Books We Abandoned (And Why)
Morrison explains in her introduction that her novel was a sort of experiment, an attempt to see what would happen when one character faces the damaging forces of society with the entire deck stacked against her. She wants to explore the “tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident” (x). And she wants to do this without dehumanizing the characters who perpetrate this damage on Pecola Breedlove, the young Black girl at the center of her novel.
Pecola grows up in a poor family with a mother who doesn’t seem to like her, a father who rapes and impregnates her, and a community who abandons her. The MacTeer family, whose oldest daughter Claudia narrates much of the novel, does what they can to help Pecola, but they too are struggling to make ends meet in 1940s Lorain, Ohio, and can only do so much.
Morrison’s novel is heartbreaking, beautiful, and important. Our students liked and understood it, and we had meaningful discussions about generational trauma, the damage that beauty standards wreak upon those who cannot live up to them, and the complicity we share when we observe and gossip about an individual’s trauma without making any effort to help.
But it is also a really hard read. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t read it—there is, after all, much value in reading that makes us uncomfortable, and our AP students are only a year away from navigating mature topics in college courses—but it is difficult to read the vivid depictions of Pecola’s rape (and later molestation by a local pedophile). We initially took a few years off because we needed a break. But in the meantime, we saw increasing numbers of our students write personal statements about their own sexual abuse and trauma, and we began to feel uncomfortable making the novel required reading for all students.
What We Chose Instead
We were determined, however, that our replacement be by an author of color, so we selected Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. This worked well for us, but we’re also working hard to discover and recommend other contemporary novels from diverse perspectives as the options continue to grow.
We selected Candide to teach satire and comedic devices, and while it’s a perfect fit for that purpose, our students (and maybe a little part of us) just didn’t like it. The story of a young man and his band of friends who undergo the worst series of misfortunes you can imagine but continue to proclaim the philosophy that this is “the best of all possible worlds” is entertaining, sometimes shocking, and definitely successful in conveying Voltaire’s point that, in fact, this is not the best of all possible worlds, and insisting that it is leads to all kinds of trouble.
But it requires quite a bit of background knowledge, both historical and philosophical, and comedic devices are often quite challenging for students to grasp, especially when they’re already struggling with the text.
What We Chose Instead
Our most successful replacement was Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, which our students found much more interesting (and humorous). We could also get through it pretty quickly at the end of the semester while accomplishing the same purpose, and saving time in AP Lit is always a good thing.
We don’t hate Shelley’s novel (though we do think it strains plausibility at points—that monster is very eloquent for someone who learned English by watching a family through a window). It also has some interesting themes to discuss about parental responsibility and the ethical boundaries of scientific advancement and discovery, themes that resonate ever so strongly today and appeal to our more STEM-focused students.
That being said, however, our students were not fans. More than anything, it’s an issue of advertising: popular culture leads our students to believe they’re about to read an exciting horror story about a monster, but that’s . . . not really what this book is. And when they also have to navigate an Arctic exploration frame story, Victor’s biography, and a lot of Romantic reflection on nature, it’s hard to keep everyone engaged.
What We Chose Instead
This is one that we didn’t so much replace as just let go, giving us more time to focus on our other texts and bring in short stories and poems. Over the years, we became much stronger believers in depth over breadth, and in a time when we’re struggling to get our students to read, we’ve come to value a less-is-more approach.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ve already read about our history with Hamlet. When we decided to introduce Shakespeare into our AP Lit curriculum, we figured we should go big and teach Hamlet: it is, arguably, the “masterpiece” of his bibliography, after all. And, honestly? It didn’t go badly. It was fine. And Steph’s class was weirdly obsessed with Horatio, despite her insistence that a piece of cardboard could fill his role.
But Hamlet is long, with lots of speeches and philosophizing, and it took a lot of work just to get students through the basic plot, much less engaged in a deeper thematic exploration. And we felt a little intimidated by it: going back to look at our “guided discussion” PowerPoint full of 12-point-font quotations from literary critics makes us cringe hard! (We’re sorry, former students: we promise we’d take a less lecture-y approach today!)
What We Chose Instead
When we swapped Hamlet out for Macbeth, which moves faster and is more abundant with the action, we saw more engagement, and, most importantly, our students were able to do a lot more of the heavy lifting on their own.
When we first started teaching AP Lit back in 2007, this felt like the “pinnacle” text that all AP Lit students must suffer through. Steph did, after all, and she still remembers Mrs. Baer’s infamous annual “rivets” quiz. Kate read it too, but her teacher provided no such quiz.
Again, there are reasons for this reputation: Conrad’s novella is a rich text that definitely has layers worth exploring. And it kind of (more in a minute) acknowledges the evils of colonization, essentially suggesting that, at our core, we are all barely restrained savages.
But. First of all, it’s so hard for students. It took a few years of teaching it for us to fully understand and be able to appreciate what Conrad is doing. We rarely got beyond comprehension and, to be perfectly honest, our “discussions” were probably better described as lectures.
The novella has also not aged well. Marlowe’s attitude toward the Africans he is there to civilize (and frequent use of racial slurs) was offensive in 2007; it’s inexcusable now. Britain is no innocent bystander when it comes to colonialism, and much ink has been spilled on the question of whether Conrad himself is racist (which, looking back, is an obvious yes).
What We Chose Instead
It’s hard to make a case that the pros outweigh the cons with Heart of Darkness, particularly when Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart addresses colonialism in a more complex way and from the voice of the oppressed rather than that of the oppressor.
Steph tried. She really did. She loves this book, and she made a good faith effort for several years to make it engaging for students. But it never took. Kate, never a fan of the novel, was grateful she finally let it go.
The long (so long) story of poor orphan Jane’s abusive upbringing, chaotic relationship with Mr. Rochester, strange relationship with St. John, and then, ultimately, marriage to Rochester is a good story with rich characterization and plenty to discuss. But Steph will admit that long-winded British coming-of-age novels aren’t for everyone, and they’re certainly not for most high school students.
The length and slow pace didn’t work for our students, and since most students didn’t read the whole thing, it was challenging to have meaningful discussions. Especially when Steph, for some inexplicable reason, tried to do student-led activities with a novel that students . . . didn’t read.
What We Chose Instead
It is to students’ benefit to grapple with the dense language and stamina required to read lengthy British novels, but we found Pride and Prejudice to be far more appealing to our students.
We tried a lot of tragedies over the years, and since Oedipus is the ultimate classic tragedy, we figured it would be a useful addition to students’ cultural toolkits.
But we weren’t the only ones who thought so. Most of our students had already read Oedipus by the time they got to us. Re-reading can be a good thing, but since our focus was on the elements of tragedy and making sure students had cultural awareness, it didn’t feel like a great use of our time.
What We Chose Instead
Shakespeare served our purposes much better!
We’ve had a long history with this one. Steph struggled with the philosophical underpinnings for years: philosophy in general makes her head spin, so having to explain existentialism each year (an -ism very much counter to her own worldview) required annual tutoring sessions with Kate.
It’s also pretty hard to like a protagonist who kills a man because the sun was too hot, an act he spends the rest of the novel on trial for. Despite this, it actually worked well for our students, particularly in the fall. Bogged down by the stress of college application season, the existentialist philosophy that life is meaningless made them feel seen. From a more academic perspective, the novel was short, and it was very obvious what the “meaning of the work as a whole” is, which made it an easy “first novel” to use.
But when Kate returned to the classroom after cancer treatment, it was no longer a text or philosophy she wanted to explore with students, so we dropped it.
What We Chose Instead
We replaced it with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which at face value seems like an odd choice given its dystopian content, but the love between the father and son and hints of hope make it more palatable.
Like The Road, this was a class-selected novel, and though it’s been quite a few years, we don’t remember any issues with students’ engagement.
But Eugenides’ novel was not a book we wanted to keep reteaching. On the one hand, it features a lot of suicide. We had students then who found it upsetting, and students’ mental health issues have only been on the rise since. The narrators’ (yes, plural, pushing the limits of plausibility) sexual obsession with the Lisbon sisters predominates, which is kind of uncomfortable to discuss in class. And the themes have a lot to do with suburbia, which just didn’t engage our students, many of whom were children of immigrants and not living a life remotely close to the one depicted in the novel.
This would be an interesting book to discuss in college or with other adults, but when we only had limited time with our students, we didn’t feel comfortable with the content or the example of literary merit.
What We Chose Instead
The Road was a stronger contemporary read, and Things Fall Apart was a better final read before the exam.
We know many of these AP Literature books are being taught successfully in classrooms around the country. But we also know that there’s as much, if not more, to learn from what didn’t work as from what did work, and what works for one teacher or group of students doesn’t work for everyone. We hope, if nothing else, we’ve given you some food for thought, and best case scenario, we’ve given you the permission you needed to let go of a beloved classic that is not working for you and your students.
What AP Literature books have you tried that didn’t work for you and your students? Or, which ones of these AP Literature books do you still teach and love teaching? We’d love to hear your thoughts, especially how you navigate some of the issues we found challenging. Reach out to us at hello@threeheads.works or on Instagram @threeheads.works and let us know!