I have to take an american literature class and i know nothing about it lol
Well you have a lot to pick from. American literature is literature written or produced in the United States
Oh Ok any famous authors I should get started with?
American literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and its preceding colonies (for specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States). Before the founding of the United States, the British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States were heavily influenced by English literature. The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition of English literature. 
The revolutionary period is notable for the political writings of Benjamin
written in a letter to a friend, novelist George Eliot labelled it "the most uncomfortable book you can imagine...the hero is in love with the daughter all through the book, and marries the mother at the end." However, American publisher and novelist James Thomas Fields, in his autobiographical "Yesterdays with Authors", said of the book, and of his friend Thackeray:
"To my thinking, it is a marvel in literature, and I have read it oftener than any of the other works.