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| Harper Lee, author _______ the Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most significant works ____ the history _______ American literature, died _____ Friday ______age 89 ______ her hometown _________ Monroeville, Alabama. A private funeral will be held ______ a few days, a statement from Lee's family said. To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story ____ an idealistic white southern lawyer Atticus Finch, who defends an African-American man unjustly accused ____raping a white woman. The story is set ______ the Great Depression ________the 1930s and is seen ________the eyes of Finch's young daughter, Scout. It is as much a story of growing _____ as it is a tale of racism and injustice. It was a remarkable novel for its time, published ________1960 when black Americans were battling ________ civil rights and confronted by violent mobs, indifferent police, and racist white politicians. ________a 1991 Library of Congress survey _____books that have affected people's live, To Kill a Mockingbird was ranked second only to the Bible. To Kill a Mockingbird has already sold over 30 million copies _______English and remains in print selling more _____ a million copies a year. After Mockingbird was published Lee avoided the spotlight. She stopped talking _______ the press, went home ________ Monroeville and closed her door. She kept it closed _________decades, emerging only occasionally to write something for Oprah Winfrey's magazine, or to receive the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush _____the White House or to attend an annual luncheon _____the University of Alabama ________ meet the winners of a high school essay contest _______ the subject of her book. _________ the 50th anniversary of Mockingbird's publication ________2010, Lee remained elusive. “I am still alive, although very quiet," she once wrote_____ her book agent, three decades after the novel was published. And she stayed that way. To Kill a Mockingbird was the Huckleberry Finn of the 20th century," said Charles J. Shields, author of a 2006 biography, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. "It redirected American’s gaze after WWII back to the enduring problems of racism and injustice ______ this country." President Obama, who presented her with the National Medal of the Arts _____ 2011, issued a statement _______the White House Facebook page. "Ms. Lee changed America ______the better. Her book changed the way Americans see each other more powerfully ________100 speeches could”. Lee was catapulted back _______ the public eye last year with the release of Go Set a Watchman, a “newly discovered” novel she wrote _______ the 1950s. The publisher says it was the fastest-selling book __________ its history, selling more than 1.1 million copies ________North America _______ its first week. Lee was born Nelle Harper Lee ______ April 28, 1926,_____ Monroeville. She was the youngest ____ four children of lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Nelle is Ellen spelled backwards, pronounced Nell. _____ addition to being a lawyer, Lee’s father was also a newspaperman and state legislator. Lee’s mother, Frances was by the time of Lee’s birth showing signs of mental illness, probably bipolar disorder. Never close _______ her mother, Lee enjoyed a relationship ________her father that resembled the one between the novel’s father and daughter. Lee struggled with the novel ________ years _____ the 1950s while working at menial jobs _________ New York. Then some Alabama friends gave her a Christmas gift of enough money to quit her job and work full time _____ the book ______a year. To Kill a Mockingbird deals __________themes such as coming of age, tolerance and empathy, fatherhood and hero worship, and the eccentricities of small-town people. It’s also ___________ racism and incest, murder and injustice, fear and ignorance, and the possibility of redemption. Even though other USA novels have sold more books, Mockingbird helped bring ________ social changes, especially in civil rights. What other book has done the same? edited from USA Today and VOA News  |
