Annotated Bibliography 1
Useful overviews of many topics in contemporary literature (although some
essays, and the first halves of others, cover the pre-1970 period), including drama;
Vietnam; Postmodernist fiction; and gay and lesbian, Jewish, African American,
Italian American, Irish American, Native American, Hispanic, and Asian Ameri-
can writing. Essays on film and music offer helpful context.
Kathryn Hume, American Dream, American Nightmare: Fiction since 1960 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Discusses more than a hundred novels written between 1960 and 2000, the “Gen-
eration of the Lost Dream.” By “breaking down the divisions among standard
categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender,” Hume identifies “shared core
concerns, values, and techniques among seemingly disparate and unconnected
writers.” She looks at literary considerations of the immigrant experience, lib-
eralism and lost innocence, scientific materialism, spiritual yearning, “tarnished
morality,” and the fear that American exceptionalism has been lost.
Nicolás Kanellos, ed., Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United
States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Comprehensive anthology spanning colonial times to the present that underscores
the diversity of Hispanic literature in the United States through its representation
of Chicano/a, Nuyorican, Cuban American, and Latino/a writings. Each section
is organized chronologically and also divided by content to highlight the cultural,
historical, and political issues that influenced the writers.
J. Gerald Kennedy, ed., Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions
and Fictive Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Excellent collection of eleven essays, plus the introduction by Kennedy, that
discuss the challenges of defining the short story and explore reasons for the
increased production and popularity of the form in recent decades. The contribu-
tors discuss examples by earlier writers such as Henry James, Jean Toomer, Ernest
Hemingway, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, J. D. Salinger, and
John Cheever but also by more-contemporary writers, including John Updike,
Louise Erdrich, and Raymond Carver.
Michael Kowalewski, “Contemporary Regionalism,” in A Companion to the
Regional Literatures of America, edited by Charles L. Crow (Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell, 2003), pp. 7–24.
Discusses the mass appeal of literary works with a regional emphasis by writ-
ers such as Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Barbara Kingsolver, and Charles
Frazier.
Wendy Lesser, “United States,” in The Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing,
edited by John Sturrock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.
406–431.
Idiosyncratic but stimulating overview of contemporary American literature that
defines contemporary as 1965 to its publication in 1996 but reaches back to discuss
earlier works. Lesser sees crime—ranging from personal ingratitude and ethnic
disloyalty to murder—as a central preoccupation of fiction, language as the focus