I don't think Marquez is tough to read and (IMO) he's a way better writer than Allende.

You just have to keep a chart out to keep track of all the Buendias with the same name.

See, I think 100 Years of Solitude is confusing, and I'm their teacher. I don't want my students to get confused and shut down, so I'm reluctant to pick that one (though I agree it's genius).

...I like the Alvarez, but I might be influenced by the fact that I just read some nonfiction by her ("Once Upon a Quinceañera") and the fact that I had to read the Marquez in Spanish, so I found it *especially* confusing. It might've been better in English. :)

PixKristin - I would highly recommend GGM's Strange Pilgrims [link] - I know it's a collection of short stories, but they all focus on the dislocation felt when in a different land and the struggle to stay centered within that feeling. I love it.

Wow, my head is spinning! Thanks, everyone. I did some more research after getting a suggestion from an LJ friend, and I think I've settled on Across A Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande.

So...I think this is my final list after some tweaking. I'm still going to show them a movie version of Hamlet and plan to show them the whole darned series of Slings & Arrows over the course of the year, so they won't be Shakespeare-deprived.

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Angels in America, Tony Kushner
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
Kindred, Octavia Butler
Across A Hundred Mountains, Reyna Grande
Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, Susan Gilman

That gives them a mix of novels, plays, fiction, and non-fiction and yet all connects to identity in America. (The course's title is technically "The Fractured American Dream," so this still works.) I like!

Forgive the pedantry, but that should be "Garcia Marquez". You file his work under the Gs. And why not go with Love In The Time of Cholera if you're worried about One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Also recommended on your theme: The Yellow Wallpaper, Bartleby The Scrivener (both for your students with shorter attention spans, I suppose), The Awakening, Invisible Man, The Moviegoer, Housekeeping, Never Let Me Go, Jim Crace's The Gift Of Stones, or (and I'm sorta kidding with this) Lolita.

Edit - whoops! Late days and short dollars.

I'd prefer Butterflies, as there is the whole political clash layered/driving with the everything, and that is definitely a Thing for me, and it isn't quite as front and center in GG (theirs is more social conflict.) Before We Were Free exists in the same frame of events as Butterflies. (You may know that, I didn't and I was reading along and hit the mention of butterflies and was all OMG. And I had to go make myself all puffy and rednosed reading Butterflies again.)

Actually, we teach Lolita, The Awakening, and both short stories you mention already.

The only thing I'm still wavering on is whether to switch Kindred with The Handmaid's Tale (since I will already be discussing race through Bluest Eye and HT will allow us to focus on gender).

There was a story going around the University of Alabama's English department while I was a student that Atwood had written A Handmaid's Tale while serving as a visiting professor there. Since my rabbit eared-TV could only get the local Fox affiliate and several local-access all-preacher, all-the-time channels, I could believe it.

I think Chronicle of a Death Foretold is the most accessible of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works, in my opinion. I read it in high school. I like Allende better though.