The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Article in Themes and Big Read categories.

The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, is designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture. The Big Read brings together partners from across the country to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment. JMRL invites all book lovers in Central Virginia to join The Big Read throughout March 2016. Read and discuss The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and participate in programs about the book, its themes, and its author.

We've selected a list of books, movies, and music in the JMRL collection that will inspire further exploration and enhance your reading. There is a printable version of the adult list. Find more resources and discussion questions for this book in the Big Read Reader’s Guide.

About the Author

• Read the official Big Read introduction to McCullers.
• Use the Literary Reference Center database to search for articles about Carson McCullers.
• Watch McCullers in an interview, speaking about her play A Member of the Wedding and writing in general.
• McCullers’ milieu
  • In the early 1940s, McCullers lived in Brooklyn Heights in a house at the center of a bohemian creative circle. Among others, the group contained authors W. H. Auden, Paul Bowles, and Richard Wright, performer Gypsy Rose Lee, and composers Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Sherrill Tippins details this enclave in her book February House.
  • She was close friends with playwright Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee obtained permission to adapt her work, as remembered in this video.
  • Artist Marielle Bancou remembers McCullers in this video.
  • McCullers is frequently cited in the same breath as other Southern Gothic writers as Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, and Eudora Welty. (This comparison would be met with denunciation by O’Connor.) Read some of Joyce Carol Oates' thoughts on these connections in this excerpted review.

Works by Carson McCullers

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
  • Downloadable eBook from Overdrive
  • Book Club Kit
  • The NEA Big Read website has a reader's guide to the book
• Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941)
• The Member of The Wedding (1946)
  • Audiobook
  • [Downloadable eBook from Overdrive]
  • Adapted into a play in 1949
• Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories (1951)
  • Contains the title novella and six short stories: "Wunderkind", "The Jockey", "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland", "The Sojourner", "A Domestic Dilemma" and "A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud"
  • [Downloadable eBook from Overdrive]
  • Adapted into a play by Edward Albee
• Clock Without Hands (1961)
  • [Downloadable eBook from Overdrive]
• The Mortgaged Heart a posthumous collection (1971)

Related Reading - Fiction

McCullers’ Southern Contemporaries

• Flannery O’Connor
• Truman Capote
• Eudora Welty

Modern Southern Gothic

• The Long Home, by William Gay

Small-Town America during the Depression

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Race in 1930s American South

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Related Reading - Nonfiction

• McCullers and Her Place in American Letters
  • The Lonely Hunter: a Biography of Carson McCullers, by Virginia Spencer Carr
  • The Republic of Imagination: American in Three Books, by Azar Nafisi
  • February House, by Sherrill Tippins

• Deafness and Deaf Culture
  • Hands of My father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love, by Myron Uhlberg
  • A Loss for Words: the Story of Deafness in a Family, by Lou Ann Walker
  • Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, by Leah Hager Cohen

• Exceptional Women
  • McCullers lived a bohemian life in mid-Twentieth-Century America, traveling widely despite disability, exploring sexuality, and mingling with creative characters of all stripes.
  • Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham, by Emily Bingham

Movies

Adaptations of McCullers’ Work

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
• Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)
• The Member of the Wedding (1952), contained in the Stanley Kramer Film Collection

Other Films

• Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) – Themes of isolation and communication come to the forefront in this documentary which examines the life of Fini Straubinger, a blind and deaf woman who dedicated her life to helping others with the same affliction.

Books for Teens

Deaf Culture

• Of Sound Mind, by Jean Ferris
• The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, by Josh Berk
• Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby
• Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

Books for Youth

Picture Books

• 1930s South/Racism
  • Uncle Jed's Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell

• Deaf Culture
  • Dad, Jackie, and Me by Myron Uhlberg
  • Moses books by Isaac Millman

Chapter Books

• 1930s South/Racism
  • Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
  • Dovey Coe by Francis O’Roark Dowell
  • Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
  • Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney
  • Stella by Starlight by Sharon Draper
  • Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
  • Sounder by William Armstrong

• Deaf Culture/Deaf Characters
  • Dovey Coe by Francis O’Roark Dowell
  • El Deafo by Cece Bell
  • Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
  • Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

Nonfiction

• • Children of the Great Depression, by Russell Freedman
  • The Great Depression: an Interactive History Adventure by Michael Burgan
  • Find books on communicating with ASL under a subject search for American Sign Language.