Annotated Bibliography
A. Poulin Jr. and Michael Waters, eds., Contemporary American Poetry, eighth edi-
tion (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth, 2005).
Influential anthology that presents seventy poets and more than five hundred
poems published since 1960 and includes photographs, biographical sketches,
bibliographies, and an overview essay.
Robert Rebein, Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmod-
ernism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).
Examines a range of Postmodernist techniques and perspectives in the use of
realism in American works published since 1980.
Jeanne Campbell Reesman, ed., Trickster Lives: Culture and Myth in American Fic-
tion (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001).
Excellent collection of essays examining the figure of the trickster in several
American cultures, including Native American, Hawaiian, African American,
and Latino/a, and in the work of such authors as Mark Twain, Jack London, Toni
Morrison, and Louise Erdrich. The essays show that the trickster figure is not
bound to any one culture but is a manifestation of a certain way of thinking, of
turning things upside down in order to startle us into new knowledge and aware-
ness, that crosses many cultures.
Kathleen Rooney, Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America,
second edition (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008).
Thorough history of Oprah’s Book Club, offering analysis of the choices and their
presentation, and discussion of the book club’s role and position in the contempo-
rary blurring of lines between high and popular culture.
A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward Jr., eds., Redef ining American Liter-
ary History (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990).
Emphasizing African American, American Indian, Asian American, and
Latino/a literatures, argues for a definition of American literature that takes
into account non-European cultures.
Annette J. Saddik, Contemporary American Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press, 2007).
Focusing on representative plays and the theme of American identity, explores the
development of American contemporary theater, placing plays within historical,
political, and theoretical contexts. Playwrights discussed include Adrienne Ken-
nedy, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Anna Deavere Smith, Karen Finley, and Will
Power.
José David Saldívar, Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1997).
Argues for a trans-Latin approach to the study of identity, political struggle, and
history as represented in fiction, travel writing, ethnography, memoir, and film by
Americans of Latino/a heritage.
Marc Shell, ed., American Babel: Literatures of the United States from Abnaki to
Zuni (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002).