Advocates inclusion of Marianne Wiggins' novel "John Dollar" in high school reading lists and literature classes. Notes that the novel is an allegory rich in poetic suggestion, metaphorical language, and symbolic meaning. (RS)

Discusses a pair of books (Annie Dillard's "An American Childhood" and Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts") that are well-written, discussion-worthy, and sufficiently alike in content that they can be taught in tandem for comparative purposes as part of a contemporary-literature unit. (RS)