Tag Archives: Harper Lee

My Life in Lit – Segregation

By Robin Bates | Published: September 25, 2025

In which I recount growing up in segregated Tennessee and recount the books that helped me cope.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Huckleberry Finn, integration, Mark Twain, May Justus, New Boy in School, racism, segregation, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed

Kingsolver on Life-Changing Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: August 18, 2025

Kingsolver answering questions about the lit that shaped her can get us all reflecting on the importance of books in our lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Albert Camus, Barbara Kingsolver, Bean Trees, Cannery Row, Charles Dickens, Children of Violence, Demon Copperhead, Doris Lessing, Homer, Huckleberry Finn, Iliad, John Steinbeck, Les Misérables, Mark Twain, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare sonnets, To Kill a Mockingbird, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

They Shoot Puppies, Don’t They?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2024

Gov. Kristi Noem boasting of shooting her puppy brings to mind the tragic dog killing by Gabriel Oak in Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Adam Serwer, animal cruelty, Charlotte's Web, E. B. White, Far from the Madding Crowd, Fred Gipson, George Orwell, Kristi Noem, Old Yeller, Shooting an Elephant, Thomas Hardy, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed

Soliloquies Changed Us Fundamentally

By Robin Bates | Published: December 10, 2023

Hamlet’s soliloquies changed the way we see ourselves and others and led the way to the novel.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Angus Fletcher, Charlotte Bronte, Hamlet, Harold Bloom, Huckleberry Finn, humanism, Jane Eyre, Le Cid, Pierre Corneille, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, soliloquies, Sorrows of Young Werther, To Kill a Mockingbird, transcendentalism, Wonderworks | Comments closed

Atticus: Future Racist or NeverTrumper?

By Robin Bates | Published: June 5, 2022

To see how gun violence and white supremacy are linked, look at “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged banned books, Go Set a Watchman, gun violence, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed

Pushing Back against the Purity Police

By Robin Bates | Published: February 21, 2022

While not as bad as fascists for censoring reading materials, leftwing purists present their own problems.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged cancel culture, censorship, Kate Clanchy, Robert Hayden, To Kill a Mockingbird, virtue police | Comments closed

Are Liberal, Conservative Bans Equal?

By Robin Bates | Published: February 6, 2022

Are liberal and conservative banning practices equal. Despite some similarities, no.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Book banning, censorship, Flannery O'Connor, Go Set a Watchman, To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morrison | Comments closed

Why I Think the Way I Think

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2021

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett | Comments closed

Angry Black Woman vs. Angry White Men

By Robin Bates | Published: January 17, 2021

For MLK Day, a June Jordan poem addressing angry white men.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Jim Crow The Sequel", Capitol Hill insurrection, Go Set a Watchman, June Jordan, Martin Luther King Day, racism, white entitlement | Comments closed