March: Book One (Common Text 2015-2016): English

The article presents literary criticism of the play "The Mountaintop" by Katori Hall. Particular focus is given to Hall's treatment of cultural transmission and civil rights leadership in the play. Details on the role of gender in the play and in the U.S. civil rights movement are also presented. Other topics include the recuperation of historical figures in African American literature and the play's depiction of civil rights worker Martin Luther King.

This article explores Marilyn Hacker's 1986 sonnet sequence,Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons,for its depiction of lesbian parenting. Hacker moves beyond the simply erotic to focus on a truly subversive act present within the queer community, namely that of child-rearing. Lesbian parenting is a private world, one not subject to the male gaze in the ways that other seemingly private worlds (like sex) are still commodified. The daughter character of Iva exemplifies the construction of self in a queer environment. Children of queer parents have the unique subject position of being “queered” themselves regardless of their ultimate sexual orientation. While this queering would seem to primarily affect their understandings of gender and sexuality, this article argues that such early “othering” serves to deconstruct one's understanding of binaries and social conformity on a large scale, thereby encouraging qualities of acceptance and compassion.