Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Fishkin, Shelley Fisher

Titel

Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion)

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

United States: Rutgers University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• American novelist E.L. Doctorow once observed that literature "endows places with meaning." Yet, as this wide-ranging new book vividly illustrates, understanding the places that shaped American writers' 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 Americais 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 Twain'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 Cahan's fiction to the Texas pump house that irrigated the fields in which the farm workers central to Gloria Anzaldúa's poetry picked produce. Rather than just providing a cursory overview of these authors' 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 writers' 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 Anzaldúa, 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 González, 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, Miné Okubo, Simon Ortiz, Américo Paredes, John P. Parker, Ann Petry, Tomás 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-Ša.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 Americareveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art, changing their world and ours in the process. Table of Contents List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Literary Landscape1 Celebrating the Many in OneWalt Whitman Birthplace, Huntington, Long Island, New York2 Living in Harmony with NatureWalden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts3 Freedom's PortThe New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, New Bedford, Massachusetts4 The House thatUncle Tom's CabinBuiltHarriet Beecher Stowe House, Hartford, Connecticut5 The Irony of American HistoryThe Mark Twain Boyhood Home, Hannibal, Missouri, and the Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut6 Native American Voices RememberWounded Knee, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota7 "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"The Paul Laurence Dunbar House, Dayton, Ohio8 Leaving the Old World for the NewThe Tenement Museum, New York City9 The Revolt from the VillageThe Original Main Street, Sauk Centre, Minnesota10 Asian American Writers and Creativity in ConfinementAngel Island Immigration Station, San Francisco, California, and Manzanar National Historic Site, Independence, California11 Harlem and the Flowering of African American LettersThe 135th Street Library / The Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, New York City12 Mexican American Writers in the Borderlands of CultureRoma, La Lomita, San Agustin de Laredo, and San Ygnacio Historic Districts, Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas13 American Writers and Dreams of the Silver ScreenHollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District, Los Angeles, CaliforniaIndex of AuthorsIndex of Historic Sites