The Essential Discomfort of Reading Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
Twain's novel forces us to face uncomfortable truths about the root causes of racism and why it is so difficult to eradicate from society.
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Literary Focus is a nonprofit organization that provides live, online literature courses for college-bound students in Grades 7-12 and professional development for secondary school English teachers.
Would you like to discuss literature in small, seminar-style classes to prepare for the rigor and challenge of college-level coursework?
Would you benefit from individual instruction to learn how to read more closely, write more clearly, and think more deeply?
Would you like to share thoughts and ideas with a diverse group of motivated students from around the country and the world?
July 13, 2024
"We highly recommend Derek as an outstanding literature teacher. In his course, we discovered precisely what we had been seeking: a challenging small-group setting led by an engaging and insightful professor. His diverse and well-chosen selection of literary works ensures students engage with a thought-provoking variety of literature. Derek's thoughtfully designed assignments hone writing skills and foster critical thinking, enabling students to excel in their AP-level studies and beyond. The writing conferences were incredibly valuable, almost like a bonus course in essay writing. Derek's commitment to student success is truly inspirational."
- Inese J.
Riga, Latvia
Fall Courses
2024
We teach six books each session at three levels of difficulty to accommodate various ages and abilities:
Level I
Our Level I books are typically taught in Grades 7-9 and utilize relatively simple vocabulary and straightforward syntax. The underlying themes can be nuanced, however, and students will need to learn how to read closely and think deeply to uncover the work's hidden meaning. These books offer a solid foundation for those students who are still developing the basic skills and knowledge necessary for more advanced literary analysis.
Level II
Level II books are generally taught in Grades 10-11 and contain more advanced vocabulary, challenging syntax, and complex themes. Students will need to learn how to read between the lines to understand the writer's true intent. The most widely read classics in American and World Literature fall in this category, and most colleges will expect incoming students to have read these books at some point in their high school careers.
Level III
Level III books are the most challenging that students will read at the high school level. They are usually reserved for AP classes in Grade 12 and represent the type of books that students will read at the college level. These books are subtle and complex, often employing difficult syntax that requires careful reading to decipher the underlying themes. When students are comfortable with Level III books, they know that they are ready for college.
Session One
September 17 - October 10
Morning Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
September 17 - October 10
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous—Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Acclaimed by critics and beloved by readers of all ages, Cisneros’ novel has been taught in schools and universities around the world since its publication in 1984.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
September 17 - October 10
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
Chinua Achebe’s critically-acclaimed narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with European colonialism is told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s. Things Fall Apart, a classic of world literature originally published in 1958, explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of Igbo customs and traditions in a way that broadens our understanding of contemporary realities in a post-colonial world.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
September 17 - October 10
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where she may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now in pictures because women are not allowed to read. Offred can remember when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job—before she lost even her own name. Like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, originally published in 1985, endures as a literary landmark and warning of a possible future that remains chillingly relevant in today's world.
Afternoon Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
September 17 - October 10
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
4:00 p.m. - 4:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
Set in a bleak, dystopian future, Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, until he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who sees the beauty of the world through the ideas found in literature instead of in the mindless chatter of television. Nearly seventy years after its publication in 1953, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 has grown more relevant in today’s world than ever before.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
September 17 - October 10
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
5:00 p.m. - 5:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
When The Awakening was first published in 1899, the critical outcry proved so vociferous that the novel was banned for decades. Now praised as a classic of early feminist literature, Kate Chopin’s novel has inspired generations of readers by rejecting conventional female roles and celebrating a woman’s journey towards self-discovery. As the heroine, Edna Pontellier, awakens to her own desires, she begins to question her ideas about marriage, motherhood, society, art, and the nature of love itself.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
September 17 - October 10
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
6:00 p.m. - 6:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
In this deeply compelling and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator describes growing up in the segregated South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood” before retreating into a basement lair amid violence and confusion. Published in 1952, Invisible Man won the National Book Award and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the 20th century.
Session Two
October 22 - November 14
Morning Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
October 22 - November 14
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954 for its startling, brutal portrait of a group of ordinary English boys marooned on a coral island. Alone in a world of uncharted possibilities, devoid of adult supervision or rules, the boys begin to forge their own society, exposing the duality of human nature—the dark, eternal divide between order and chaos, intellect and instinct, structure and savagery.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
October 22 - November 14
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
No dramatist has ever seen with more frightening clarity into the heart and mind of a murderer than has William Shakespeare in the compelling tragedy of Macbeth. Fast-moving and bloody, this drama—written in 1606—has an extraordinary energy that derives from brilliant plot devices, replete with treachery and murder, and from Shakespeare’s compelling portrait of the ultimate battle between a person’s ambition and the consequences of guilt and remorse.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
October 22 - November 14
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
Published in 1987, Toni Morrison’s spellbinding novel won the Pulitzer Prize for its unflinching look into the abyss of slavery. Sethe escaped to Ohio after being born a slave, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm in Kentucky where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby girl, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Afternoon Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
October 22 - November 14
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
4:00 p.m. - 4:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window and learns that her family—along with thousands of other Japanese Americans—have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, written in 2003, Julie Otsuka tells this family’s story from five flawlessly realized points of view.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
October 22 - November 14
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
5:00 p.m. - 5:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
Decades after its original publication in 1977, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico, deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his own people. Only by immersing himself in Native American history can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
Dates:
October 22 - November 14
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
6:00 p.m. - 6:50 p.m. MT
Tuition:
$225
Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order—all at the cost of our freedom, our full humanity, and perhaps our souls. Huxley’s masterpiece is as relevant today as it was in 1932 when it was published amid the rise of European fascism.
—Teachers—
Are you a veteran teacher interested in incorporating new instructional strategies and curricular designs into your existing practice?
Are you a new teacher looking for a comprehensive framework to teach any novel or play in an effective and engaging manner?
Are you a teacher eager to share your thoughts and ideas with other dedicated professionals outside your existing school?
—Donate—
Please support our mission by donating what you can to provide scholarships for students in financial need or from underrepresented communities.
Students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches as part of the USDA National School Lunch Program automatically receive tuition waivers to attend our academic enrichment classes.
Your generosity provides financial support for these students, and since we are a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, your contribution is 100% tax deductible.
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