Book recommendation for literature knowledge

DINOSAUR

Hi everyone! I would like to hear some suggestions on books for learning (American) literature knowledge. I'm an ESL and have never learned anything about American literature. I'm fine with RC passages that talk about literature since the pattern is quite obvious, but I feel like even if I understand the argument, there are always a lot of concepts in the passages that I just don't know and they're just some meaningless nouns to me. This makes the passages quite boring. For example, different kinds of devices, poetic forms, sonnet, couplet, quatrain, imagery, folk narrative, different genres of literature. I genuinely want to learn them, so that next time I read a literature passage, they would be more like real things in real life to me. And reading those passages would be more fun. Any advice is welcomed! Thanks!

studyingandrestudying

Maybe James Baldwin?

PTprayers

Foucault and Derrida are great for understanding the complex literary terms they use in RC, but you wanna go for more narrative based authors of different cultural heritage to get a better understanding of the literary traditions that RC likes to explore.