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Books Similar to ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’
Other readers who searched for Harper Lee’s work enjoyed these books.
Published on December 6, 2022
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
Jesmyn WardIt is hard to live up to Harper Lee’s book, which was declared America’s favorite novel according to PBS’s “The Great American Read.” But Jesmyn Ward is a contemporary author who writes about the South and race relations with astounding power. “Sing, Unburied, Sing” won the 2017 National Book Award and draws on Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Greek myths to play with the classic American road novel, weaving magical realism into the modern, rural South. Sentences rise together to form a penetrating story that lingers like fog on the Mississippi bayou where the story is set.
Mudbound
Hillary JordanTwo soldiers, one black and one white, return to their small Southern hometown after serving in WWII in this brutally engrossing and affecting story. Virgil Wiliams, the co-writer of the Netflix adaptation, told the publication Film School Rejects in an interview that he thought “Mudbound” was pertinent to today’s cultural moment about race and that he diverged from the original work because “It also struck me because there hasn’t been a ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ for this generation. And that was one of the things that, as a young adult, you could read and it could give you context for your recent history.”
Native Son
Richard WrightA classic that was one of the first stories to fully capture how systemic racism leads to horrific consequences. An enduring, thought-provoking story still pushing forward the discussion about race relations today.
Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel
Zora Neale HurstonThis book had the opposite trajectory of instant classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Native Son” — Zora Neale Hurston’s work was underappreciated in its time, but now is a staple of African-American literature. Harper Lee’s work, “Native Son,” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” have also solidified their status as pantheons of high school lit classes.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain“All right, then, I’ll go to hell,” young rascal Huckleberry Finn says as he decides to follow his heart and help Jim escape slavery once and for all. Mark Twain has gone down as one of the most beloved writers in American history for his crafty ways of revealing America’s moral failings and his superb attention to dialects.
The Hate U Give
Angie ThomasThis is a stunning take on the topic of race and police brutality that has quickly climbed the ranks to take its place as one of the greatest YA novels of our time. Starr Carter will not stay silent in the face of injustice, and her message has been amplified tenfold. Where “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a staple of the high school curriculum, “The Hate U Give” is becoming part of a new canon of works students read today.
The Devil and Harper Lee
Mark SealThe legendary novelist Harper Lee left us a cold case of her own. Almost two decades after writing “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Lee returned home to Alabama to investigate a mysterious string of murders and the charismatic reverend rumored to be the killer. But she never wrote the book. In this Scribd Original, find out more about the true-crime story that haunted Lee, but that she never managed to write.