I’m an avid reader and writer who, starting with Marcus Pfister’s The Rainbow Fish, fell in love with literature before I could talk. Once fifth grade came around, Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series were my obsessions, even over Pandie the Panda, the favorite stuffed animal I would’ve carried to the moon and back. Though I’m still a sucker for anything magic or myth-related, middle school was when a deep appreciation for language itself developed within me. And yet, after reading what The Guardian describes as “one of the greatest novels ever written in English,” I’m appalled by The Great Gatsby’s presence on my 2023 Honors English syllabus.

     F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, tells “the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire,” and his quest to capture the heart of his dream girl, Daisy Buchanan. Beneath long pages of flowery imagery, a story that describes the “impossible” lives of rich, white characters involved in bootlegging and the lucrative bond business unfolds. But after enduring nine chapters of West and East Egg living, I am confident this novel has nothing to do with what I should be reading.

     I live in a multicultural world, the heart of Los Angeles, California. Why am I reading about rich white people from the 1920s? Shouldn’t I be reading authors from various backgrounds on social issues that pertain to my generation? In the last three years, my Honors English curriculum has included two poems by Langston Hughes, half a play by Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (but only because my teacher added that novel to her syllabus). Meanwhile, fiction like The Catcher in the Rye and The Scarlet Letter is required reading: novels from white authors whose storylines are irrelevant to our lives and experiences.

     I agree that many classic novels are indispensable, and can transport teenagers like myself to worlds only remembered through text and art. It’s the way novels like The Great Gatsby are taught that unsettles me. Parul Sehgal, The New York Times literary critic, questions whether there is another novel “so established in the canon and curriculum,” even as its morality and merit are heavily debated today due to a shift in societal norms. In other words, it’s pretty outdated. But for the sake of their grades, my peers don’t question it. 

     Not every novel I read in class should be entirely relatable, but there is plenty of literature from the past to the present, from James Baldwin to Jacqueline Woodson, that speaks to our collective history and experience. Perhaps the required list of books should be tweaked to include information relevant to the teenagers of today.