Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
sentations of Chicanos and Chicanas; genre, ideology, and history; and aesthetics.
The volume includes an annotated bibliography of contemporary Chicano liter-
ary criticism.
R. V. Cassill and Joyce Carol Oates, eds., The Norton Anthology of Contemporary
Fiction, second edition (New York: Norton, 1998).
Diverse collection of more than forty short stories by writers of various tenden-
cies, including Postmodernist, multicultural, and Realist, with useful biographical
sketches at the end.
Keith Clark, ed., Contemporary Black Men’s Fiction and Drama (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2001).
Collection of essays on prose published since 1970 that examine the ways male
African American writers challenge and expand the literary conventions of both
black and mainstream American writing. The works of the recognized authors
Ernest J. Gaines, Charles Johnson, Clarence Major, Ishmael Reed, and John
Edgar Wideman and the lesser-known writers Melvin Dixon, Randall Kenan,
and Brent Wade are discussed.
Jay Clayton, The Pleasures of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Examines a wide array of novels from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s while also
clearly explaining contemporaneous developments in criticism. Clayton argues
that the novels constitute a “great period of writing” and that their power “lies in
their participation in larger networks of discourse and in their ability to attract, to
hold, and to shape particular communities of readers.”
Samuel Chase Coale, Paradigms of Paranoia: The Culture of Conspiracy in Contem-
porary American Fiction (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005).
Focuses on the roles played by anxiety, isolation, ambiguity, fragmentation, and
information overload in works by Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion,
Tim O’Brien, Paul Auster, and Toni Morrison.
Nicholas Coles and Janet Zandy, eds., American Working-Class Literature: An
Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Excellent resource featuring fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction, and songs. The
seven sections and illustrated timeline highlight historical developments in
American working-class life.
John Christopher Cunningham, Race-ing Masculinity: Identity in Contemporary
U .S. Writings (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Examines race and gender in works by American male writers of color, uncover-
ing the coexistence of antiracist themes with those of sexism and homophobia.
Writers discussed include Frank Chin, Shawn Hsu Wong, Charles Johnson,
Oscar Zeta Acosta, and Richard Rodriguez.
Philip Dacey and David Jauss, eds., Strong Measures: Contemporary American
Poetry in Traditional Forms, foreword by Richard Wilbur (New York: Harper
& Row, 1986).