I've started with a southern storyteller known as the "Father of the American Novel." Then history brought me to the most influential and highly educated African-Americans of the beginning of the 20th century who were beginning change. And from there I continued with writers who I believe helped change the political, racial and misogynistic attitudes prevailing in here these United States. Each brought their part in reshaping the American landscape (some good, some maybe not so good), Yet it resonated in the heart and minds of folks across this diverse country a sense of personal freedom and the right to say what we believe. Writers gained new found respect as the troubadours of free press and speech and got doors opened that had been long shut to ordinary folks for centuries. I hope you’ll share your favorites and perhaps even why they are.

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1876)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Booker T. Washington: Up from Slavery (1901) W.E.B. Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Jack London: The Call of the Wild (1903)
Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence (1920)
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1926)
William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (1929) * Won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1949
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) * Won the Pulitzer Prize & the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1968
Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead (1943)
George Orwell: Animal Farm (1945)
Eleanor Roosevelt: On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Speeches (1948, Paris)
Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman (1949)
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1957)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
John Updike: Run Rabbit (1960)
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (1961) * Won the Pulitzer Prize

John Irving: The World According to Garp (1978)
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness (1994)

Bella Pollen (2004) ^

^My prediction that she will become an author of note in the coming decades.

I'd have to say there are four most favorite and each came at important stages in my life.
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STAGE I: Rebellious early teens - Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

STAGE II: Cocky self-assured pot smokin' boardin' school dude - J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

STAGE III: Big Boy on Campus "MR YALE" - Head up my ass - John Irving: The World According to Garp

STAGE IV: Anxious and uncertain what to do next with my silly-assed and scared, love-lost life: Bella Pollen: Hunting Unicorns