Winner of the John S. Tuckey 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award for Mark Twain Scholarship from The Center for Mark Twain Studies American novelist E.L. Doctorow once observed that literature ldquo;endows places with meaning.rdquo; Yet; as this wide-ranging new book vividly illustrates; understanding the places that shaped American writersrsquo; lives and their art can provide deep insight into what makes their literature truly meaningful. Published on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Historic Preservation Act; Writing America is a unique; passionate; and eclectic series of meditations on literature and history; covering over 150 important National Register historic sites; all pivotal to the stories that make up America; from chapels to battlefields; from plantations to immigration stations; and from theaters to internment camps. The book considers not only the traditional sites for literary tourism; such as Mark Twainrsquo;s sumptuous Connecticut home and the peaceful woods surrounding Walden Pond; but also locations that highlight the diversity of American literature; from the New York tenements that spawned Abraham Cahanrsquo;s fiction to the Texas pump house that irrigated the fields in which the farm workers central to Gloria Anzalduacute;arsquo;s poetry picked produce. Rather than just providing a cursory overview of these authorsrsquo; achievements; acclaimed literary scholar and cultural historian Shelley Fisher Fishkin offers a deep and personal reflection on how key sites bore witness to the struggles of American writers and inspired their dreams. She probes the global impact of American writersrsquo; innovative art and also examines the distinctive contributions to American culture by American writers who wrote in languages other than English; including Yiddish; Chinese; and Spanish. Only a scholar with as wide-ranging interests as Shelley Fisher Fishkin would dare to bring together in one book writers as diverse as Gloria Anzalduacute;a; Nicholas Black Elk; David Bradley; Abraham Cahan; S. Alice Callahan; Raymond Chandler; Frank Chin; Elizabeth Cook-Lynn; Countee Cullen; Frederick Douglass; Paul Laurence Dunbar; Jessie Fauset; William Faulkner; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Allen Ginsberg; Jovita Gonzaacute;lez; Rolando Hinojosa; Langston Hughes; Zora Neale Hurston; Lawson Fusao Inada; James Weldon Johnson; Erica Jong; Maxine Hong Kingston; Irena Klepfisz; Nella Larsen; Emma Lazarus; Sinclair Lewis; Genny Lim; Claude McKay; Herman Melville; N. Scott Momaday; William Northup; John Okada; Mineacute; Okubo; Simon Ortiz; Ameacute;rico Paredes; John P. Parker; Ann Petry; Tomaacute;s Rivera; Wendy Rose; Morris Rosenfeld; John Steinbeck; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Henry David Thoreau; Mark Twain; Yoshiko Uchida; Tino Villanueva; Nathanael West; Walt Whitman; Richard Wright; Hisaye Yamamoto; Anzia Yezierska; and Zitkala-Scaron;a. Leading readers on an enticing journey across the borders of physical places and imaginative terrains; the book includes over 60 images; and extended excerpts from a variety of literary works. Each chapter ends with resources for further exploration. Writing America reveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art; changing their world and ours in the process.
2015-10-28 2015-10-28File Name: B017RQLR5Q
Review
