I chose to read “The Literary Canon—Which Books Should Be Required Reading?” and “Is the Literary Canon Still Racist and Sexist?” These two articles contradict each other in some ways, but there were some things they agreed on. The first article focused on the idea that the canon—whether referring to the American Literary Canon or the Western Literary Canon—may contain a lot of dead white men, but those works are just as important as the new age authors that are not men and/or not white. I think this is a very good point to discuss as this subject has been debated for a long time now. I believe that while it is extremely important to update the canon and include women and races other than white, it is also important to at least be familiar with the classic works by “dead white men.” Those classic works that have been on the canon lists for a long time are there for a reason and students should be familiar with them. On the other hand though, if everyone starts to ignore the classic European/Greek literary works there will no longer be a need to be familiar with them. Even just in my lifetime I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually needed to know what some of these classics were about and more often than not it was just to be able to contribute to a conversation. In my opinion today’s world is already moving away from the Western Literary Canon and studying works that are more relevant to today. The second article I read was arguing that the literary canon is still dominated by male authors, and the need to change this. Since the Western Literary Canon and even the American Literary Canon encompass a long, long span of time I think it is hard to include women and other races from the beginning. Seeing as when some of these very old works were written most people who were not male and white were not educated or were not in a position to be published. As a result we only have works by white men. I think that the works that came when it became acceptable for women and people who were not white to write and be published should be examined and considered to be added to the canons. In my high school experience I was exposed to many different types of writing. The English teachers that I had did not focus very much on works from the Literary Canon except for Shakespeare. For this reason I was exposed to many different writers who were not always men or white. I did enjoy this class and I did feel ready for college English even though I may not know as much about Greek and Roman works of literature that are considered classics. I do not think that today it is absolutely necessary to have read a great deal from the Western Literary Canon or the American Literary Canon in order to succeed in life.