Go Down, Moses is a 1942 novel by William Faulkner, featuring the complete version of "The Bear." The stories within this novel revolve around the McCaslin family, beginning with Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy, and concluding with "Uncle Ike" as an elderly man.

Jack London's 1910 novel White Fang narrates the coming-of-age tale of a boy in the Alaskan wilderness at the turn of the century. The wilderness imparts enduring lessons through a remarkable dog who is also part wolf.

Published in 1845, the autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass serves as an excellent starting point for exploring slavery from the perspective of the enslaved. Douglass's narrative is pertinent to the struggles of all slaves, regardless of the era.

Faulkner significantly influenced Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. Her 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, recounts the story of a young man named Milkman Dead, whose exploration of his ancestry leads him, among other adventures, on a hunting expedition.

Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1919 by Faulkner's friend Sherwood Anderson, tells the coming-of-age story of George Willard, a young man growing up in a small Midwestern town. This collection of short stories depicts George's neighbors confiding their personal tales to him, a budding journalist, which brings the town's diverse inhabitants together into a cohesive whole.

Ernest Hemingway's short story "Big Two-Hearted River" was first published in his 1925 collection In Our Time. The story portrays Nick Adams's return to a familiar fishing camp from his youth, where he seeks healing after his World War I injuries.

Margaret Mitchell's 1939 novel Gone with the Wind, written around the same time Faulkner was revising "The Bear," offers an intriguing contrast to Faulkner's stark depiction of the South. Mitchell's plantations are depicted as grand, gracious symbols of genteel Southern life. However, her portrayal of slaves reduces them to picturesque stereotypes of loyal but uneducated servants.