The works listed will allow your students to further explore the theme of Triumphing over Hatred and Ignorance and other themes related to When Rain Clouds Gather:


Fiction
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Knopf, 1992. A tale of the colonization of Nigeria, considered Achebe's masterpiece. This book is available in McDougal Littell's Literature Connections Program. (challenge)

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. 1953. New York: Dial, 1963. Baldwin's first novel—riveting and lyrical—is a saga of three generations of black Americans in Harlem. (average)

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random, 1989. The narrator in this novel tells his story from an underground cell, explaining that his invisibility comes from others seeing his race and poverty, not his person. By relating the story of his life, the narrator discovers his identity, which enables him to emerge from the underground. (challenge)


Nonfiction
Lessing, Doris. African Laughter. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. Lessing observes the changes that she noticed when she visited Zimbabwe four times between 1982 and 1992. (challenge)

Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy, The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Mathabane tells of his early years in utter poverty and the humiliation he experienced living under apartheid. (average to difficult)

Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. 1957. Boston: Beacon, 1967. A classic analysis of the psychological effects of colonialism on both the colonized and colonizers. (challenge)