status as a provocative and controversial public fig-
ure in books and essays, culminating in her return to
fiction withThe Volcano Lover(1992) andIn America
(2000), historical novels that summed up much of
her work in the preceding decades, as did her play
Alice in Bed: A Play in Eight Scenes(pb. 1993) and her
eyewitness account of the war in Bosnia, on which
she reflected in her direction of Samuel Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot(pr. 1954), produced in Sarajevo in
1993.
The Volcano Loveris the often-told story of Admiral
Horatio Nelson, the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar,
his mistress, Emma Hamilton, and her husband,
William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Na-
ples. This is the stuff of romantic, historical fiction—
perhaps the least likely subject, it would have
seemed, for Sontag, an aesthete who built her repu-
tation on scorning conventional novels and deplor-
ing the mediocre state of American fiction. How-
ever, the novel reflected the 1990’s by featuring a
narrator using Sontag’s own voice, one that com-
mented from the vantage point of the present on the
significance of the past. Thus, the narrator com-
ments on imperialism and critiques Nelson’s role in
suppressing the Neapolitan Revolution against the
Bourbon monarchs. The narrator’s reflections on
William Hamilton’s role as an art collector was an in-
direct way of commenting on the acquisitiveness and
speculation that marked the late 1980’s and early
1990’s.
Sontag’s use of three female narrators at the
end of her novel reflected her growing conscious-
ness in the 1990’s of feminist concerns—of the way
women’s points of view had been suppressed in his-
tory. She continued exploring this feminist theme in
Alice in Bed, an examination of Alice James’s se-
cluded life among her more famous brothers,
Henry, the novelist, and William, the psychologist.
Similarly,In America, which concentrates on the
nineteenth century sojourn of Polish actress Maryna
Zalewska in California, continues Sontag’s concern
in the 1990’s with juxtaposing the present and the
past. Thus, her first chapter, “Zero,” explains who
the writer ofIn Americais, detailing much of her own
biography and inviting the reader to see Zalewska’s
story as also exemplifying the career of other ambi-
tious women, including Sontag herself.
Always a political activist, Sontag expressed her
solidarity with the people of Sarajevo who were
shelled during the Bosnian war. She risked her life
by taking up residence in the city and directing a
production ofWaiting for Godot, which explored fun-
damental questions about human suffering and the
responsibility of individuals to do something about it.
Impact In the 1990’s, Sontag enhanced her reputa-
tion as a woman of letters and public intellectual by
publishing in diverse genres and amplifying feminist
and political issues.
Further Reading
Rollyson, Carl.Female Icons: Marilyn Monroe to Susan
Sontag. New York: iUniverse, 2005.
Rollyson, Carl, and Lisa Paddock.Susan Sontag: The
Making of an Icon. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.
Seligman, Craig.Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me.
New York: Counterpoint, 2004.
Carl RollysonSee also Art movements; Bosnia conflict; Litera-
ture in the United States; Theater in the United
States; Women’s rights. Sosa, Sammy
Identification Professional baseball player
Born November 12, 1968; San Pedro de Macorís,
Dominican Republic
Sammy Sosa started the 1990’s as an interesting prospect
and ended the decade as a record-breaking home run slug-
ger who, along with Mark McGwire, was credited with
bringing baseball back to its former popularity after a long
and bitter strike.
Sammy Sosa made his major-league debut in 1989
with the Texas Rangers and was traded to the Chi-
cago White Sox that year. In 1990, he hit fifteen
home runs but gave no indication that he would be-
come the slugger who would twice break (in the
1990’s) Roger Maris’s single-season home run rec-
ord of sixty-one home runs. He showed great poten-
tial with the White Sox, causing future hall of famer
Carlton Fisk to comment, “He can achieve anything
he wants.” After a somewhat successful first year with
the White Sox, he slumped during the 1991 season
and was traded to the White Sox crosstown rival, the
Cubs, in 1992.
The baseball strike of 1994-1995 put baseball in a
difficult position. When the season resumed in
April, 1995, the enthusiasm was just not there, and790 Sosa, Sammy The Nineties in America