Overview

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 Anzaldua'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 Anzaldua, 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 Gonzalez, 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, Mine Okubo, Simon Ortiz, Americo Paredes, John P. Parker, Ann Petry, Tomas 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-Sa. 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Edition:   A Reader's Companion
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   1.030kg
ISBN:  

9780813575971

ISBN 10:   0813575974
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   11 November 2015
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

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

Reviews

Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the best guide you could have through American Literature and the places that inspired it. She writes like an angel. She appreciates the diversity and humor of the American spirit. Read her! --Erica Jong poet and author (04/17/2015)

Author Information

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.

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