tino to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Although the
new Latino literature would not fully flower for an-
other decade, one of its most celebrated figures,
Sandra Cisneros, published her first book,The House
on Mango Street—the portrait of a Chicana artist as a
young woman—in 1983 and a volume of poetry,My
Wicked, Wicked Ways, in 1987. Lorna Dee Cervantes
published her first book of poetry,Emplumada,in
- Blending prose and poetry, Cherrie Moraga,
inLoving in the War Years(1983), and Gloria An-
zaldúa, inBorderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
(1987), each celebrated sexual difference and hy-
brid ethnic identities.
Novels about Chinese immigrants and their
American-born children, such as Amy Tan’sThe Joy
Luck Club(1989) and Maxine Hong Kingston’sChina
Men(1980) andTripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
(1989), provided Asian American literature with
new energy and visibility. Playwright David Henry
Hwang explored the lives of Chinese in America
inF.O.B.(1981),The Dance and the Railroad(1982),
andFamily Devotions(1983), while his Tony Award-
winningM. Butterfly(1988) was a study in sexual am-
biguity that focused on the relationship between a
French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer. InJas-
mine(1989), Bharati Mukherjee followed her pro-
tagonist from her native village in India to New York
and then to Iowa, while the stories in bothDarkness
(1985) andThe Middleman, and Other Stories(1988)
featured immigrants from a variety of countries in
addition to India.
During the 1980’s, writers from tribal back-
grounds also affirmed their place in American liter-
ary culture. In Love Medicine(1984) andTracks
(1988), Louise Erdrich examined relationships
among Ojibwa in North Dakota through seven de-
cades, whileBeet Queen(1986) focused on non-Indian
characters in the fictional North Dakota town of
Argus. Another part-Ojibwa author, Gerald Vizenor,
deployed a more elusive style inGriever: An American
Monkey King in China(1987) andTrickster of Liberty:
Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage at Petronia(1988).
James Welch’sFools Crow(1986) was a historical
novel set in 1870 among the author’s Blackfoot an-
cestors. InThe Woman Who Owned the Shadows(1983),
Paula Gunn Allen, of mixed Laguna Pueblo, Sioux,
and Lebanese Jewish ancestry, offered a feminist
take on a woman’s quest to understand her multira-
cial identity.
The Legacy of AIDS During the 1980’s, acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) began to rav-
age communities throughout the United States. In
And the Band Played On(1987), Randy Shilts offered
the first comprehensive narrative of how AIDS
spread and how officials, including President Ron-
ald Reagan, tried to ignore it, because its principal
victims at first were sexually active gay men. The dev-
astation caused by AIDS inspired many works that
combined elegy with anger, such as activist and au-
thor Larry Kramer’s playThe Normal Heart(1985).
Widespread indifference or even hostility toward
the gay casualties of AIDS also prompted many
writers to affirm publicly their own gay or lesbian
identity. Edmund White’s autobiographical novelsA
Boy’s Own Stor y(1982) andThe Beautiful Room Is
Empty(1988) and Harvey Fierstein’s theatricalTo r c h
Song Trilogy(1982) testified to the challenges of com-
ing out of the closet. Armistead Maupin’s popular
Tales of the Citynovel sequence (1978, 1980, 1982,
1984, 1987, and 1989) provided inside accounts of
gay lives. Marilyn Hacker, Audre Lorde, and Adri-
enne Rich created a body of poetry drawn from les-
bian experience.
Avant-Garde Fiction Though doing so brought
them neither fame nor fortune, at least initially, sev-
eral talented writers were intent on challenging
the conventions of fiction. The structure of Walter
Abish’sHow German Is It(1980) was deliberately dis-
junctive, David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress
(1988) jettisoned plot, and Gilbert Sorrentino teased
readers’ formal expectations withAberration of Star-
light(1980), Odd Number(1987), and Misterioso
(1989). William Gaddis’sCarpenter’s Gothic(1985) was
a bitter satire that abandoned linear storytelling in
service to a vision of moral chaos. One of the darkest
novels of the decade was Cormac McCarthy’sBlood
Meridien(1985), a fragmented, gory account of may-
hem in the old Southwest. WithThe Names(1982),
White Noise(1985), andLibra(1988), works murky
with specters of conspiracy, Don DeLillo began to ac-
quire a following, both despite and because of his re-
fusal to explain his enigmatic world.
In Theory InCultural Literacy: What Ever y American
Needs to Know(1987), E. D. Hirsch, Jr., lamented
the loss of a common body of knowledge in the
splintered, contemporary American society. Allan
Bloom’sThe Closing of the American Mind(1987)
came down on the side of an aristocracy of the intel-594 Literature in the United States The Eighties in America