Words Wednesday: Harper Lee

Today’s Words Wednesday features Harper Lee.

Quote by Harper Lee, graphic by Books on the Wall

This quote comes from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Published in 1960, the novel follows two young children, Scout and Jem, and their lawyer father, Atticus Finch,  as he defends a wrongfully accused black man in Depression era-Alabama. To Kill a Mockingbird met instant critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

To Kill a Mockingbird was long Harper Lee’s only published work.  However, in 2015, she released Go Set a Watchman, a sequel of sorts to her previous work. Regardless of the literary quality of the novel, many critics felt that Leenow 89 years old, deaf, and blindwas taken advantage of despite her long-time insistence that she would never publish again. Readers were also disappointed to learn of Atticus’ apparent racism (though scholars have argued that Atticus was always racist).

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

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