(Possession, 1990) and J. K. Rowling (the Harry Pot-
ter series, 1997-2007), and also meant Canadian
writers like Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace, 1996) and
Alice Munro, Indian writers like Arundhati Roy (The
God of Small Things, 1997) and Rohinton Mistry (A
Fine Balance, 1995), and South African writers like
J. M. Coetzee (Disgrace, 1999). The 1990’s saw best
sellers in the United States by world writers like
Umberto Eco, whoseIl pendolo di Foucault(1988;
Foucault’s Pendulum, 1989) was still a best seller in
1990, Gabriel García Márquez (El general en su
laberinto, 1989;The General in His Labyrinth, 1990),
and Laura Esquivel (Como agua para chocolate, 1989;
Like Water for Chocolate, 1992).
At the same time that the literary marketplace was
welcoming world writers, American writers were cel-
ebrating their regional roots. In the tumultuous
pressures of the 1990’s, in other words, readers were
becoming both more “macro” and more “micro” in
their literary tastes, expanding their reading inter-
ests worldwide, yet homing in on familiar, local geog-
raphy. Of writers already cited, Jane Smiley and Lou-
ise Erdrich celebrate their Midwestern roots, Larry
McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy focus on Texas
and the West, Barbara Kingsolver on Arizona, Rick
Bass on Montana, Charles Frazier on North Caro-
lina, and Don DeLillo on New York City. Such geo-
graphical identifications are almost endless. Garri-
son Keillor mines Minnesota in his stories of Lake
Wobegon, William Kennedy upstate New York, Rick
Moody (The Ice Storm, 1994) Rhode Island, John Ed-
gar Wideman (Two Cities, 1998) Pittsburgh and Phil-
adelphia, Jim Harrison (The Road Home, 1998) Ne-
braska, Kent Haruf (Plainsong, 1999) the American
prairie, and David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars,
1994) and Annie Dillard (The Living, 1992) the
Northwest. There have always been writers drawing
stories from their rich southern heritage, and in the
1990’s they included Lee Smith (The Devil’s Dream,
1992), Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina,
1992), and Wendell Berry with stories and novels of
his native Kentucky.
Nonfiction: The Creative Memoir Possibly the most
noticeable literary movement in the 1990’s oc-
curred not in fiction, but in nonfiction, with the
emergence of the creative memoir as a distinct and
popular form. Memoirs and autobiographies have
been popular for centuries, but in the 1990’s the cre-
ative memoir began to emerge as a distinct genre
and to compete with fiction in its storytelling power.
Fiction and nonfiction had crossed lines before in
the 1960’s and 1970’s with the New Journalism, a
form of news reporting that borrowed fictional tech-
niques (such as point of view and stream of con-
sciousness) to present a more intimate portrait of
a subject. In the 1990’s, this was clearly occurring
in the memoirs that began to dominate nonfiction
best-seller lists. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes
(1996), his gripping story of growing up in Cork, Ire-
land, and emigrating to America, was on theNew
York Timesbest-seller list for over a year. Mary Karr’s
The Liars’ Club(1995) and Rick Bragg’sAll Over but
the Shoutin’(1997) had attributes similar to Mc-
Court’s volume: an almost incredible amount of de-
tail about childhood hardship, and a compelling,
novelistic plot. (A few years later, this line between
fiction and nonfiction would explode when James
Frey’s 2003 memoir,A Million Little Pieces, chosen for
Oprah Winfrey’s book club, was exposed to be signif-
icantly fictionalized.) Memoirs appeared in the
1990’s from all ranks: from political figures (Jimmy
Carter in 1997) to actors and entertainers (Kather-
ine Hepburn in 1992, Howard Stern in 1993).
Ethnic autobiographies also proliferated in the
decade, in part because the memoir gives the ethnic
writer the perfect literary form to write about such
themes as assimilation and cultural conflict, dual
identity, and generation gaps. Judith Ortiz Cofer
publishedSilent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a
Puerto Rican Childhood (1990); Elmaz Abinader
Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon
(1990), Victor VillaseñorRain of Gold(1991), and
Mary Crow DogLakota Woman(1990). Richard Ro-
driguez publishedDays of Obligation: An Argument
with My Mexican Fatherin 1992, and Luís J. Rodriguez
his chronicle of L.A. gang life inAlways Running
(1993); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., publishedColored Peo-
ple(1994), and Bell HooksBone Black(1997); Gus-
tavo Pérez Firmat publishedNext Year in Cubain
1995, and Chinese American Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Among the White Moon Facesin 1996. A new interest in
people’s lives is evident in the 1990’s, as well as a
fresh desire to tell the story of becoming American.
These impulses resulted in a large number of cre-
ative memoirs.Impact Changes in the literary marketplace—the
ways in which books were distributed, read, and re-
viewed—helped to stimulate literary discussion and524 Literature in the United States The Nineties in America