Tag Archives: Harper Lee

Top 10 Parent-Child Classics (Positive)

By Robin Bates | Published: March 25, 2014

A top ten list of classics with positive depictions of parent-child relationships.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Mother to Son", Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Francis Hodgson Burnett, George Eliot, Golden Bowl, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Fielding, Henry James, Huckleberry Finn, Langston Hughes, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Mark Twain, Parent-child relationships, Silas Marner, Tempest, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Jones, Uncle Tom's Cabin, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

In Solitary Others We See Ourselves

By Robin Bates | Published: June 14, 2013

When a Maine hermit is arrested after 27 years in solitude, we project our stories upon him.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Something", Daniel Defoe, loneliness, Mary Oliver, Robinson Crusoe, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed

Harper Lee’s White Liberal Fantasy

By Robin Bates | Published: May 3, 2013

Important though it was, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was also a white liberal fantasy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Blues for Mister Charlie, Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin, liberalism, racism, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed

The White Liberal in Civil Rights Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: February 25, 2013

White Liberals suffer a downward spiral in 1960’s Civil Rights Literature, from heroic Atticus Finch to “Radical Chic” Leonard Bernstein.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Blues for Mister Charlie, Civil Rights Movement, Eldridge Cleaver, James Baldwin, Radical Chic, Soul on Ice, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Wolve, White Liberals | Comments closed

America’s Avian Maestro, the Mockingbird

By Robin Bates | Published: May 26, 2012

Tom Robbins and Scott Bates regard the mockingbird as an emblem for the consummate artist.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Mockingbird", "Talented Mockingbird", Mockingbirds, Scott Bates, Skinny Legs and All, Songbirds, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robbins | Comments closed

Teaching Kids to Stand Up to Bullies

By Robin Bates | Published: September 28, 2011

Michael Gerson writes that “Lord of the Flies” gives kids a picture of the bullying they experience and “To Kill a Mockingbird” the courage to stand up to it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged bullying, Education, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, William Golding, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Analyzing Loughner’s Booklist

By Robin Bates | Published: January 10, 2011

Like much of America, I am still in a state of shock over Saturday’s shooting of a Congresswoman, a judge, and 16 others. Like many I wonder if this was an example of a disturbed mind encountering the inflamed political rhetoric that has come to characterize American political discourse. (Add Arizona’s permissive gun laws into […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Adolph Hitler, Aesop, Aldous Huxley, Alice through the Look Glass, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Arizona killings, Ayn Rand, Brave New World, Charles Bukowski, Communist Manifesto, Ernest Hemingway, Fables, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Hermann Hesse, Homer, James Barrie, Jared Lee Loughner, Jonathan Swift, Karl Marx, Ken Kesey, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Mein Kampf, Meno, nimal Farm, Norton Juster Phentom Tollbooth, Odyssey, Old Man and the Sea, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peter Pan, Plot, Pulp, Ray Bradbury, Reading George Orwell, Republic, Siddhartha, To Kill a Mockingbird, violence, We the Living, Wizard of Oz | Comments closed

On Obama, Lincoln, and Compromise

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2010

Saturday’s New York Times had a column by African American novelist Ishmael Reed attacking those leftists that are excoriating President Obama for his willingness to extend the Bush tax cuts in return for a second stimulus package. What particularly galls Reed is that many of these critics refer to themselves as Obama’s base (as in, […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barack Obama, Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed, politics, racism, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed

Mockingbird, Powerful but Problematic

By Robin Bates | Published: July 8, 2010

Harper Lee National Public Radio reminded me yesterday that this summer is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I have written a couple of times about the book, once talking about its importance to me growing up in the segregated south and once examining Malcolm Gladwell’s critique of […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Malcolm Gladwell, Race, racism, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments closed