To Kill a Mockingbird is an unpublished short story.
American literature is the literature written or produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies . To Kill a Mockingbird . As a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman , the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence . Author Mary McDonough Murphy , who collected individual impressions of To Kill a Mockingbird by several authors and public figures , calls the book `` an astonishing phenomenon '' .