Accent Is Identity
Accent is Identity—American Cultural Context
Not to get too political here, but being an American in 2017 isn’t a simple proposition. But no matter how any individual American might feel about their government, current events, or present standing and image in the world, there are still broadly shared cultural referents and standpoints. People are people, to be sure, but within a given culture, even within a nation as large as the United States, there is much that is shared.
The suggestions below aren’t meant to glorify Americans or American history, nor to critique prevailing views. They certainly aren’t comprehensive. They’re a grab bag of suggestions for getting your imagination going. Some offer insight about how Americans view themselves—some deep shared assumptions, core beliefs and ideals. Some offer vivid descriptions and details about the texture of American life, in the past and present. You may have read or seen some of these before (especially some of the movies, I imagine!). But if you’re rereading or re-seeing something, make sure to read or watch from an actor’s perspective, imagining yourself into the story, the people, the time and place.
Founding myths and American ideals
Washington, A Life, Ron Chernow
Hamilton, Ron Chernow
Democracy in America, de Toqueville
The Declaration of Independence
Washington’s Farewell Address
Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
The Gettysburg Address
FDR, ‘nothing to fear except fear itself’
JFK Inaugural
MLK Letter from a Birmingham Jail
MLK I Have a Dream
Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright speech
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Emily Dickinson, poems
Movies
American Beauty
Edward Scissorhands
Lincoln
The Great Escape
The Front Page
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
It’s a Wonderful Life
An Affair to Remember
The Social Network
Forrest Gump
Citizen Kane
A Touch of Evil
Once Upon a Time in America
The Right Stuff
Bowling for Columbine
Do the Right Thing
Selma
Hidden Figures
Dances with Wolves
The Ice Storm
Double Indemnity
Chinatown
To Kill a Mockingbird
Top Gun
Saving Private Ryan
Remember the Titans
Rocky
Oh Brother Where Art Thou?
The Maltese Falcon
Casablanca
The African Queen
Good Morning Vietnam
The World According to Garp
Malcolm X
TV
The West Wing
The Wire
Breaking Bad
John Adams
Veep
Orange is the New Black
The Twilight Zone
Cheers
Mad Men
I Love Lucy
All in the Family
Little House on the Prairie
Music
Hamilton
Bob Dylan
Duke Ellington
Lauryn Hill
John Coltrane
Charles Mingus
Louis Armstrong
Ella Fitzgerald
Woody Guthrie
Johnny Cash
Green Day, American Idiot
virtually all Broadway musicals
Cole Porter
Rogers and Hammerstein
Stephen Sondheim
Leonard Bernstein
REM
Don McLean, American Pie
Bruce Springsteen
John Cougar Mellencamp
Jon Bon Jovi
Aerosmith
Lou Reed
jazz—the American art form
Visual Art
John Singer Sargent
Georgia O’Keefe
Robert Rauschenburg
Jackson Pollock
Edward Hopper
Andy Warhol
Jasper Johns
Norman Rockwell
Andrew Wyeth
Washington Crossing the Delaware
Books & Plays
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Catcher in the Rye
The Invisible Man
The Scarlet Letter
Little House on the Prairie
The Great Gatsby
The Sun Also Rises
The Corrections
Louis Lamour
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
The Crucible
Death of a Salesman
A Prayer for Owen Meaney
Cider House Rules
The Grapes of Wrath
The Old Man and the Sea
Little House on the Prairie
Little Women
A Farewell to Arms
On the Road
Catch-22
The Sound and the Fury
Beloved
The Glass Menagerie
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_United_States
Interested in learning more about "General" American? Check out my online classes!
"General" American 101—The Essentials