Writing America - Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Writing America

Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion)
Buch | Softcover
336 Seiten
2017 | First Paperback Edition
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8135-7598-8 (ISBN)
23,55 inkl. MwSt
Writing America takes readers on an eclectic tour of historic sites that have been pivotal to the making of American literature, reflecting the true diversity of the nation and its authors. Profusely illustrated, it is the literary gift book for 2015.
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 “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 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 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 America reveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art, changing their world and ours in the process.

SHELLEY FISHER FISHKIN is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, professor of English, and director of American studies at Stanford University. She is also the award-winning author, editor or co-editor of over forty books and over one hundred articles, essays, columns, and reviews. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and is a former president of the American Studies Association.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Literary Landscape

1          Celebrating the Many in One
Walt Whitman Birthplace, Huntington, Long Island, New York

2          Living in Harmony with Nature
Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts

3          Freedom’s Port
The New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, New Bedford, Massachusetts

4          The House that Uncle Tom’s Cabin Built
Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Hartford, Connecticut

5          The Irony of American History
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home, Hannibal, Missouri, and the Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut

6          Native American Voices Remember
Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota

7          “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
The Paul Laurence Dunbar House, Dayton, Ohio

8          Leaving the Old World for the New
The Tenement Museum, New York City

9          The Revolt from the Village
The Original Main Street, Sauk Centre, Minnesota

10        Asian American Writers and Creativity in Confinement
Angel Island Immigration Station, San Francisco, California, and Manzanar National Historic Site, Independence, California

11        Harlem and the Flowering of African American Letters
The 135th Street Library / The Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, New York City

12        Mexican American Writers in the Borderlands of Culture
Roma, La Lomita, San Agustin de Laredo, and San Ygnacio Historic Districts, Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas

13        American Writers and Dreams of the Silver Screen
Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District, Los Angeles, California

Index of Authors
Index of Historic Sites

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 62 photographs
Verlagsort New Brunswick NJ
Sprache englisch
Maße 160 x 227 mm
Gewicht 567 g
Themenwelt Literatur Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
Sachbuch/Ratgeber Geschichte / Politik Allgemeines / Lexika
Reisen Reiseberichte
Reiseführer Nord- / Mittelamerika USA
Geisteswissenschaften Geschichte Regional- / Ländergeschichte
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
Technik Architektur
Technik Bauwesen
ISBN-10 0-8135-7598-2 / 0813575982
ISBN-13 978-0-8135-7598-8 / 9780813575988
Zustand Neuware
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