RFP Staff
♦ Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman before To Kill a Mockingbird and submitted it for publication. At the request of an editor, she wrote the story again from the perspective of Jean Louise as a child and the international bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird was born. Lee’s realistic portrayal of 1950’s America has the world’s attention. Women’s roles and racism are far more clearly depicted through the eyes of Jean Louise, fully grown in the novel that Harper Lee first wrote during days she wrote full time, under the mentorship of Truman Capote during her time in New York City.
Read Chapter One in an interactive post in The Guardian, here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2015/jul/10/go-set-a-watchman-read-the-first-chapter
Katie Couric looks into Lee’s hometown Monroeville, Alabama and raises questions about whether the 89 year-old revered author was actually aware the novel would be released after her sister and lawyer (who may have protected the novel from public access) died this past year. Harper Lee, nearly deaf and blind as the result of a stroke, now resides in an assisted living facility.
View Couric’s thought-provoking video segment here:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/beyond-kill-mockingbird-harper-lees-150824947.html
