Paley (The Collected Stories, 1994), Rick Bass (In the
Loyal Mountains, 1995), Andre Dubus (Dancing After
Hours, 1996), Gina Berriault (Women in Their Beds,
which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in
1996), Andrea Barrett (Ship Fever, and Other Stories,
which took the National Book Award in 1996), Ann
Beattie (Park City, 1998), and Alice Munro (The Love
of a Good Woman, which won the National Book
Critics Circle Award in 1998). Annie Proulx pub-
lishedClose Range: Wyoming Storiesin 1999, a collec-
tion that included the story “Brokeback Mountain,”
which was made into a film in 2005.The New York
Timesat the end of 1999 included twenty-nine short-
story collections in a list of 130 “Notable Books” of
the previous year. The emergence of short, short fic-
tion (also called sudden fiction, or stories of 500-
1000 words) also increased the popularity of the
form. The genre that after World War II (with the
death ofThe Saturday Evening Post,Collier’s,Scribner’s
Monthly, and other popular magazines that had
showcased short fiction through its heyday of the
1920’s through the 1940’s) was dying was suddenly
given new life.
The Multicultural 1990’s The 1990’s consolidated
the movements toward inclusion and diversity in
American letters that had been building during pre-
ceding decades. Both popular and academic books
reflected a new awareness of the importance of is-
sues of gender, race, age, and social class, and the
very tone of the discussion of American literature
was changing. To read but one barometer,The Heath
Anthology of American Literatureappeared in 1990 and
quickly became one of the most popular college
textbooks in the field. Its second (1994) and third
(1998) editions only confirmed its importance in
demonstrating the diversity and breadth of Ameri-
can literature, which earlier anthologies had de-
fined much more narrowly. In the second volume
(covering 1865-present) of that third edition, for ex-
ample, earlier women writers (Anzia Yezierska, Tillie
Olsen) were rediscovered, there was a new section
on “The New Negro Renaissance” of 1920-1940, there
were samples of the poetry carved in the walls of An-
gel Island detention center in San Francisco Bay by
Chinese immigrants, and there were contemporary
examples of writing from every major ethnic group
in the United States.The Heath Anthologyonly clari-
fied what was already taking place in the literary mar-
ketplace and in bookstores nationwide, and other
textbook publishers soon followed Heath’s lead.
Whatever question there was of the importance of
women’s writing in American culture was certainly
settled by the 1990’s. Best sellers by Oates, Proulx,
Smiley, Shields, Alice McDermott (Charming Billy
won the National Book Award in 1998), and others
had long been commonplace. To cite justThe New
York Timesbest-seller lists from the 1990’s, women
dominated in every genre of literature, from celeb-
rity memoirs (Madonna, Dolly Parton), through ro-
mances and historical fiction (Jean M. Auel, Judith
Krantz, Mary Higgins Clark—even Alexandra Ripley
writing a sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s 1936Gone
with the Wind), thrillers (Anne Rice), mysteries (Sue
Grafton, Sara Paretsky), humor (Erma Bombeck),
political commentary (Molly Ivins), feminist theory
(Deborah Tannen, Susan Sontag, Susan Faludi),
and photography (Annie Leibovitz). Gender had
become an accepted category of literary discussion
by the 1990’s, and there appeared collections of
women’s writing, even women’s humor (such asThe
Penguin Book of Women’s Humor, 1992), as well as nu-
merous anthologies of writings by gay and lesbian
writers. The more narrowly defined American litera-
ture of a half century earlier, which had assumed
male heterosexual hegemony, had been broadened
in all directions.Ethnic American Literature The 1990’s also con-
firmed the power and possibility of ethnic American
literature. The emergence of modern ethnic litera-
ture accompanied the fight for identity of various
groups in the second half of the twentieth century.
While there had certainly been ethnic American
writers earlier, theirs had often been isolated, excep-
tional contributions. When the movements for eth-
nic recognition began in the second half of the twen-
tieth century—first the Civil Rights movement for
black Americans in the 1950’s, and then the Ameri-
can Indian Movement in the 1960’s—they were ac-
companied by, or helped to create, new waves of eth-
nic literature.
By the 1990’s, the essential place of ethnic writing
in American culture was clearly established. The Cu-
ban American writer Oscar Hijuelos took the Pulit-
zer Prize in fiction withThe Mambo Kings Play Songs of
Love(1989) in 1990, the African American novelist
Charles Johnson won the National Book Award the
same year forMiddle Passage, and Ernest Gaines fol-
lowed with the National Book Critics Circle Award522 Literature in the United States The Nineties in America