Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
ous study for academics and a model for writers such as Michael Chabon, Joyce
Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky, Don DeLillo, and David Foster Wallace, all of whom
incorporate themes, images, and structures from genre fiction into literary fiction.
The contemporary era is one of innovative, ethnically diverse writing that offers
new insights into previously underrepresented populations. The age-old pleasure
of storytelling is strong in this era, perhaps more so than in those immediately
preceding it, as writers meet the challenge of representing “the world” that is
America.
While any period demarcation is somewhat arbitrary, several events in 1970
heralded the concerns that have preoccupied much of the era. The publication
of Studs Terkel’s nonfiction Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
helped to inspire awareness of class as it shapes people’s lives. Essence magazine,
aimed at an African American readership, was founded in 1970. Novels published
by African American women in 1970 include Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye,
Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and Maya Angelou’s I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings. African American women were also well represented
in poetry, with Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, and Sonia Sanchez all publishing
collections in 1970. Along with the founding of the Feminist Press, 1970 brought
several key works of the feminist movement: Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic
of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch,
and Robin Morgan’s anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful. The prolific Oates received
the 1970 National Book Award for her fourth novel, them (1969). One Hundred
Years of Solitude, the English translation of the Colombian author Gabriel García
Márquez’s Cien años de soledad (1967), appeared in 1970; in the following decades
elements of García Márquez’s magical realism, intertwining the supernatural with
the mundane, showed up in the works of many North American authors.