Tag
American Literature
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Gatsby @ 100: American Classrooms, American Dreams?
The story of Gatsby, Nick, Tom, and Daisy is also, much more importantly, part of the history of hundreds of millions of student readers and their teachers, spanning eight decades.
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B-Sides: L. Frank Baum’s “The Enchanted Island of Yew”
Many know L. Frank Baum for writing the book that inspired the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” However, like any good magician, Baum had a lot more up his sleeve.
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B-Sides: George S. Schuyler’s “Black Empire”
“Black Empire” ends with an international revolution, led by a heroic Black genius preaching empowerment; it ends with a continental dictator clutching power through unremittent cruelty and cries of racial supremacy. Both statements are true.
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Subterranean Worlds and Liberatory Futures
The metaphor of the underground as political is rooted in the spatial undergrounds of nineteenth-century America.
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Life inside the Fiction Factory: Dan Sinykin on Conglomerate Publishing
“An author’s photo is more appealing to the consumer than the publisher’s colophon.”
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Attention is Love: A Discussion with Lauren Groff and Laura McGrath
“I wanted to make nature a source of conflict, but also a source of joy and beauty and wonder and delight.”
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Literary Experiments and Black Southern Time Travel with Kiese Laymon
“My reckoning with the Black South was an attempt to give integrity and texture to my belief that I was an Afrikan with a ‘k.’”
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“The Meat and Bones of Life”: Erika T. Wurth and Leif Sorensen
“I’m not a political scientist. I didn’t major in Native American studies. I’m a doctor of metaphors.”
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Ogden & Hardwick’s Everyday Enigmas
“Good afternoon, ma’am. Do you ever feel that it is so hard to know how to be happy?”
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B-Sides: Agnes Smedley’s “Daughter of Earth”
Very much against the grain of most standard leftist work, “Daughter of Earth” remains unsettled and unsettling throughout.
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B-Sides: Elinor Wylie’s “Atavism”
Caesuras do things to stories—and to readers, even readers too young to know the term.
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Is American Fiction Too Provincial?
While most American fiction focuses on national concerns, its high-end, prize-winning fiction looks around the globe. Why the divide?
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B-Sides: Gene Stratton-Porter’s “A Girl of the Limberlost”
All but forgotten today, Gene Stratton-Porter was—in the early 20th century …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at SEA
The Society of Early Americanists convened in Tulsa, OK, last week to talk about American literature and culture. This year’s conference featured blooming trees, a bus trip to the …
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The Fiction of Bohemian NYC
What does New York City have to do with America as a whole? This metropolis, which gave rise to the nation’s current leader and whose worst gilded …
