While text selection is indeed a crucial choice that transmits explicit and implicit messages to students about what literature is and why it matters, it remains one element that needs to be put into conversation with a broader set of considerations in order for educators to fully grapple with the nature and purpose of rigorous and transformative literature instruction. This brief is organized to address this full range of considerations, encompassing: (1) Purpose: Why should educators teach literature? (2) Practice: How should educators teach literature? and (3) Picks: What literature should educators teach? The principles promoted in this brief to guide the teaching of literature in the secondary English classroom are grounded in specific values that reflect how the authors interpret the role of public education in U.S. society. The authors structure their discussion of purpose, practice, and picks of literature instruction within what they consider to be the fundamental promise of literacy education--the cultivation of critical knowledge, skills, and dispositions that young people can leverage to design a more equitable, just, and empathetic democratic future.