What Does “Literary Merit” Even Mean?

Educational jargon can feel like its own language: engagement, differentiation, text-dependent questions, academic conversation, high-stakes assessment. And don’t forget the acronyms: PBIS, IEP, EL, AP, IB, CTE.

Then there’s subject and content-specific jargon: TEPAC paragraph, line of reasoning, or terms with hotly debated definitions like “theme.” Don’t even get us started on the jargon that’s specific to your school site or department.

If you teach a specialized course like AP English Literature and Composition, one term causes a lot of confusion, the nebulous: “literary merit.” 

The phrase “literary merit” appeared annually in the prompt for Q3 on the AP Lit exam prior to 2021. In this prompt, students are required to write about a novel, play, or epic poem of their choice, and, prior to 2021, the last line of the prompt always included some version of the sentence, “Choose a work from the list below or another novel or play of comparable literary merit.”

Naturally, this phrase generates confusion, particularly since “literary merit” is a highly subjective term. And as we, as a culture, redefine which voices merit inclusion in the literary canon, it becomes an even trickier question. Add to that students who are increasingly reluctant to read (and thus very uninterested in slogging through an “obvious” choice like Great Expectations or Jane Eyre), and it’s even harder: what contemporary books can we select that are going to engage and appropriately challenge our students?

If you teach AP Lit (or just want to select books that push your students beyond what they would choose for themselves), unpacking the phrase “literary merit” is essential. We may not have all the answers, but as longtime readers and members of the AP Lit teaching community, we do have some insights.

What Has “Literary Merit” Meant Historically?

For decades (or, really, centuries), “literary merit” has been synonymous with the Western literary canon: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner. Want to include a “world” author? How about Margaret Atwood (from Canada) or one of the Russians? Want to include “diverse voices”? Assign a work by a Black American author like Toni Morrison or Ralph Ellison.

When students asked us what “literary merit” meant, we gave them lists of titles compiled from the College Board’s suggested works on past exams or suggested they use “books that would be taught in school” or generic terms like “classics.” Maybe we’d let them read a recent Nobel or Pulitzer Prize winner.

But these are not the books that most engage students, and, with some exceptions, the titles tend to be very Eurocentric and often from a male perspective, even when they do address other cultures. These classic books also feel outdated to students: many of the most commonly assigned reads by non-white authors date back to the 1970s or 1980s. As children of the 80s, we’d love to argue that the 1970s and 1980s are “not that old,” but to our students, those decades feel ancient, and the struggles our students face do look different from the struggles they see on those pages.

Redefining the Literary Canon

As a culture, we’ve begun to push back against the Western canon. The biggest, and most important, way is in fighting for more diverse voices—gender, race, culture, religion, sexuality—to be included in the canon. We’re examining not just who is represented in the pages of our stories but who is telling the stories.

But we’re also questioning elitism and book snobbery: who says YA can’t be considered of “literary merit”? Who says audiobooks don’t really count as “reading”? What about graphic novels? What about film? Shouldn’t our students be able to read anything they like? Can’t these other genres address complex and important themes? Don’t they also show incredible imagination and artistry?

In line with these shifts, the College Board has removed the phrase “literary merit” from its stable prompt wording (starting in 2021), and the list of recommended titles has grown significantly, featuring more contemporary novels and novels from increasingly diverse perspectives.
So, to some extent, the “literary merit” requirement is gone. But does that really mean we should let our students read and write about anything? Probably not.

Why “Literary Merit” Is Still (Kind of) Worth Considering

There are four reasons we think it’s worth holding onto the term “literary merit” in AP Lit, even if we do so loosely and a little bit uncomfortably.

Students still need practice with complex texts, exposure to books they wouldn’t select on their own, and familiarity with culturally significant texts.

Yes, we want our students to read, and yes, there are YA novels and graphic novels that are exceptionally well-written about important themes. But. As teachers, and especially as AP teachers, we do have a duty to push our students outside their comfort zones, whether that’s by giving them books that challenge their comprehension and analysis abilities (not to mention their reading stamina), pushing them to read about perspectives that differ from or even challenge their own, or introducing them to authors, genres, and subjects they would never select independently. Would we have selected Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as our pleasure reading? Absolutely not. Is it a book we and our students are better for having read? Sure is.

Additionally, we do our students a disservice if we send them off to college without any familiarity with the classics that college professors and even modern authors and screenwriters assume as common knowledge and thus allude to in their works. Students who have never been exposed to The Odyssey, Shakespeare, or The Great Gatsby are at a distinct disadvantage compared to their classmates who have.

AP Literature requires students to recognize and discuss how the artistry and construction of a text contributes to its meaning.

We love a good mystery novel. But most mystery novels are plot-driven. They don’t have layers of meaning and significant symbols that subtly reinforce other things happening in the text. We must select for our AP Literature students, and encourage them to select for discussion, texts that have layers of meaning and utilize literary devices to convey that meaning. On the rubrics for Q1 and Q2 on the AP exam, students cannot earn full credit in the Evidence and Commentary row without explaining how “multiple literary elements and techniques in [the text] contribute to its meaning.” 

If our students are going to be prepared for this task, they have to practice, so we need to present them with texts in which a variety of literary elements and techniques do significantly contribute to meaning.

Students are unlikely to earn the coveted “sophistication point” if they write about a book that doesn’t have complex themes and characters.

To earn full points on the Q3 scoring rubric, students must “[demonstrate] sophistication of thought and/or [develop] a complex literary argument.” They can do this one of four ways:

If we’re going to give students a chance at earning this point, we have to give them works that incorporate complexities or tensions and works that allow for alternative interpretations. Novels that are plot-driven and/or written for younger audiences often don’t give students enough to work with when attempting to make more complex arguments. Or, as is often the case with the best YA literature, the work is part of a series, and to fully address the complexity, students must discuss multiple novels, which they cannot do sufficiently in a 40-minute timed situation.

AP readers, while encouraged to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, are still human, which means they have their own biases.

AP readers are likely longtime AP Lit teachers and college English professors. Yes, they’re encouraged to give students the benefit of the doubt and score all essays about some kind of broadly defined literary work. But they’re also more likely to score an essay they’ve taught for years differently than one they’ve never read before. And some teachers, much as they (if we’re being perfectly honest, “we”) try to ignore their preferences, are going to struggle to give an essay about To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before the same score as a student who capably handled One Hundred Years of Solitude. 

It’s hard to ignore what you’ve been trained for years to view as “good literature,” and you want your students to have every advantage going into the exam. We all know that we tell our students “handwriting doesn’t matter” for a grade but that an illegible essay certainly affects our mindset and opinion while grading. We need, then, to give our students the tools to succeed in any circumstances.

How to Find Works of “Literary Merit” in the 21st Century

So we have a challenge before us, but it’s a challenge that can be met. We have an obligation to diversify the canon, challenging our students’ perspectives and allowing them to see themselves on the page. We have an obligation to present our students with the kinds of rigorous texts that will force them to grow as readers, writers, and thinkers. But we also have the expertise and insight to know that students need to be engaged in order to learn.

So here are some things to keep in mind when considering what “literary merit” means in your classroom.

Continue to look at the released prompts from the College Board.

The College Board is making efforts to diversify its canon and include more contemporary titles and titles by a wide variety of diverse voices. Look, in particular, at texts from the last few years: the more recent the lists are, the more likely they are to be “updated.”

Join online teacher communities.

There are many robust AP teacher communities on social media. Join a community and engage in the conversation: you’ll hear what books your colleagues are having success with (or struggling with), and you’ll get ideas for new texts to work into your curriculum. We wish we’d joined years ago, especially when we were struggling to find short stories that would appeal to our students and represent a broader range of voices.

Continue to look at “award-winners,” but broaden your list of awards.

The Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes are still great places to look. The 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction is Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, a fantastic look at the opioid epidemic in the South that feels very current. The list of Pulitzer winners features titles that appear on the College Board’s more recent lists, and some of the most recent winners are Argentinian, gay, American Indian/Indigenous people, Vietnamese, and Black.

But we would also urge you to consider looking at other recognitions, including national book club selections, especially Oprah’s Book Club. Book club novels are selected because they have rich content and complex stories that are worthy of discussion, and while they aren’t all AP Lit appropriate, there are some fantastic selections. Where the Crawdads Sing and Little Fires Everywhere are two popular AP Lit books, both of which were featured in Reese’s Book Club, and Oprah has highlighted The Underground Railroad and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. All four titles have shown up on the College Board’s lists of selected titles in recent years.

Pro tip: if you’re looking at Reese’s Book Club, do some investigating on Goodreads and Amazon: some of her books would be fantastic in AP Lit while others are more commercial in nature.

If you do include YA novels or graphic novels, use them early in the year and make an effort to select texts that feature complexity and artistic crafting.

There are carefully crafted YA novels and graphic novels with rich themes out there. These can make a great entry point into AP Lit: yes, you should get to more advanced texts, but sometimes students benefit from practicing with something more accessible first. Look for authors like Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down), Jeff Zentner (In the Wild Light), Amber McBride (Me, Moth and We Are All So Good at Smiling), and Julie Berry (Lovely War), who are very intentional about the structure of their novels and use poetic devices to enrich meaning.

Teach your students the difference between literary and commercial fiction.

We used Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense as our course textbook, and its chapters on prose broke down the difference between commercial fiction, written to entertain and make money, and literary fiction, written to engage the reader more deeply in the world. We talked about these terms with students so they could start to recognize the differences in texts themselves, but it was also helpful for us. 

Look for books that might be described as “character-driven” rather than “plot-driven.” Complex, even unlikable, characters offer opportunities for rich discussion and analysis. Look for themes that challenge traditional worldviews or for texts that point toward more than one theme. Look for novels with ambiguous endings or books that use structure, point of view, and symbolism in interesting ways. These are the kinds of books that give our students practice engaging with complexity in ways that will benefit them on the AP exam, in college, and beyond.

Consider differentiating between “class reading” and “independent reading.”

We used to require our AP students to read from a list of titles that had been recommended by the College Board, and while we meant well, we realized there were very few students truly benefiting from this policy. Many of them struggled to understand the texts at a level they could successfully write about on the exam without teacher guidance, some of them weren’t actually reading the books, and still others were struggling to find texts that engaged them.

We realized that we wanted students to enjoy reading and to remember that reading can be a way to relax and unwind, not always a chore. So we assigned challenging texts as class reading but allowed students to plow through that new YA fantasy novel they were dying to read during independent reading time. This balance not only helps students to see the difference in levels of quality for themselves but reminds them of all that reading can be.

Remember your class goals

This post is, by and large, written for AP Lit teachers who are trying to prepare students for college literature courses and the AP exam. Yes, all teachers should be selecting at least a text or two that challenges students and pushes them out of their comfort zone, but in non-AP classes, we absolutely fall on the side of prioritizing student engagement and rich discussion over so-called “literary merit.”

“Literary merit” is, more than ever, a subjective term, and we’re glad that we, as a culture at large and as English teachers in particular, are rethinking what it means and what texts are worthy of teaching and discussion. We want to be part of that conversation, and so we’re making efforts to keep up with books that we think would make great AP Lit additions.

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