Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
Lisa Maria Hogeland, Feminism and Its Fictions: The Consciousness-Raising Novel
and the Women’s Liberation Movement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1998).
Traces the influence of the women’s movement on novels of the 1970s that focus
on feminist themes. Writers discussed are Erica Jong, Marilyn French, Marge
Piercy, Alix Kates Shulman, Alison Lurie, Joanna Russ, and Joan Didion.
Merja Makinen, Feminist Popular Fiction (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
Argues that feminists have successfully appropriated genre fiction and provides
useful overviews of several literary genres—detective fiction, science fiction,
romance, and fairy tale—and a summary of critical feminist debates.
Katherine B. Payant, Becoming and Bonding: Contemporary Feminism and Popular
Fiction by American Women Writers (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1993).
Discusses how popular fiction written by women from the late 1960s through the
early 1990s reflects feminist ideas, rather than applying feminist literary theory to
the works. Individual chapters are devoted to Marge Piercy, Mary Gordon, and
Toni Morrison.
Mickey Pearlman, ed., Mother Puzzles: Daughters and Mothers in Contemporary
American Literature (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989).
Collection of essays analyzing why depictions of mothers in current literature by
American women “has moved from sainted marginality (as icon), to vicious cari-
cature (as destroyer), to the puzzling figure” and why many works feature sexual
abuse and incest.
Alvina E. Quintana, ed., Reading U .S. Latina Writers: Remapping American Litera-
ture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
Essential collection of essays about important American Latina writers. The
introduction situates the works historically, while the essays treat individual
authors.
Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Brad-
street to Annie Proulx (New York: Knopf, 2009).
Offers the first comprehensive history of American women writers from
1650 to 2000. Chapters 18 through 20 treat the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s,
respectively.
Showalter, Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Collection of essays, based on Showalter’s 1989 Clarendon lectures at Oxford
University, exploring the contributions of women writers to American letters
while also tracing a “literary history of mastery and growth.”
Showalter, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Litz, eds., Modern American Women Writ-
ers (New York: Scribners, 1993).
Essays examining the contributions of women to American letters. Each essay
combines biographical information with analysis of literary works.