Language, Gender, and Community in Late Twentieth-Century Fiction: American Voices and American Identities (American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century)

✍ Scribed by Mary Jane Hurst

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 251
• Series: American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Drawing on critical frameworks, this study establishes the centrality of language, gender, and community in the quest for identity in contemporary American fiction. Close readings of novels by Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, Ann Beattie, John Updike, Chang-rae Lee, and Rudolfo Anaya, among others, show how individuals find their American identities by finding their personal voices within a culturally diverse and gender conscious environment. 

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
1 Introduction......Page 14
2 Finding One’s Place by Finding One’s Voice in Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying and Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy......Page 34
3 Language and Gender in the Academic Communities of Ann Beattie’s Another You and John Updike’s Memories of the Ford Administration......Page 64
4 Balancing Self and Other through Speech and Silence in Chang- rae Lee’s Native Speaker and Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses......Page 90
5 Love, Destruction, and Wounded Hearts in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris......Page 116
6 Contours of the Future in Denise Chávez’s Face of an Angel and Rudolfo Anaya’s Alburquerque......Page 152
7 Twenty- First- Century Reflections on American Voices and American Identities......Page 184
Notes......Page 198
Bibliography......Page 206
Index......Page 232