Writing America
Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion)
by Shelley Fisher Fishkin
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Pub Date Nov 11 2015 | Archive Date Jun 24 2016
Description
Winner of the John S. Tuckey 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award for Mark Twain Scholarship from The Center for Mark Twain Studies
American novelist E.L. Doctorow once observed that literature “endows places with meaning.” Yet, as this wide-ranging new book vividly illustrates, understanding the places that shaped American writers’ lives and their art can provide deep insight into what makes their literature truly meaningful.
Published on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Historic Preservation Act, Writing America is a unique, passionate, and eclectic series of meditations on literature and history, covering over 150 important National Register historic sites, all pivotal to the stories that make up America, from chapels to battlefields; from plantations to immigration stations; and from theaters to internment camps. The book considers not only the traditional sites for literary tourism, such as Mark Twain’s sumptuous Connecticut home and the peaceful woods surrounding Walden Pond, but also locations that highlight the diversity of American literature, from the New York tenements that spawned Abraham Cahan’s fiction to the Texas pump house that irrigated the fields in which the farm workers central to Gloria Anzaldúa’s poetry picked produce. Rather than just providing a cursory overview of these authors’ achievements, acclaimed literary scholar and cultural historian Shelley Fisher Fishkin offers a deep and personal reflection on how key sites bore witness to the struggles of American writers and inspired their dreams. She probes the global impact of American writers’ innovative art and also examines the distinctive contributions to American culture by American writers who wrote in languages other than English, including Yiddish, Chinese, and Spanish.
Only a scholar with as wide-ranging interests as Shelley Fisher Fishkin would dare to bring together in one book writers as diverse as Gloria Anzaldúa, Nicholas Black Elk, David Bradley, Abraham Cahan, S. Alice Callahan, Raymond Chandler, Frank Chin, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jessie Fauset, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Jovita González, Rolando Hinojosa, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Lawson Fusao Inada, James Weldon Johnson, Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Irena Klepfisz, Nella Larsen, Emma Lazarus, Sinclair Lewis, Genny Lim, Claude McKay, Herman Melville, N. Scott Momaday, William Northup, John Okada, Miné Okubo, Simon Ortiz, Américo Paredes, John P. Parker, Ann Petry, Tomás Rivera, Wendy Rose, Morris Rosenfeld, John Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Yoshiko Uchida, Tino Villanueva, Nathanael West, Walt Whitman, Richard Wright, Hisaye Yamamoto, Anzia Yezierska, and Zitkala-Ša.
Leading readers on an enticing journey across the borders of physical places and imaginative terrains, the book includes over 60 images, and extended excerpts from a variety of literary works. Each chapter ends with resources for further exploration. Writing America reveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art, changing their world and ours in the process.
American novelist E.L. Doctorow once observed that literature “endows places with meaning.” Yet, as this wide-ranging new book vividly illustrates, understanding the places that shaped American writers’ lives and their art can provide deep insight into what makes their literature truly meaningful.
Published on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Historic Preservation Act, Writing America is a unique, passionate, and eclectic series of meditations on literature and history, covering over 150 important National Register historic sites, all pivotal to the stories that make up America, from chapels to battlefields; from plantations to immigration stations; and from theaters to internment camps. The book considers not only the traditional sites for literary tourism, such as Mark Twain’s sumptuous Connecticut home and the peaceful woods surrounding Walden Pond, but also locations that highlight the diversity of American literature, from the New York tenements that spawned Abraham Cahan’s fiction to the Texas pump house that irrigated the fields in which the farm workers central to Gloria Anzaldúa’s poetry picked produce. Rather than just providing a cursory overview of these authors’ achievements, acclaimed literary scholar and cultural historian Shelley Fisher Fishkin offers a deep and personal reflection on how key sites bore witness to the struggles of American writers and inspired their dreams. She probes the global impact of American writers’ innovative art and also examines the distinctive contributions to American culture by American writers who wrote in languages other than English, including Yiddish, Chinese, and Spanish.
Only a scholar with as wide-ranging interests as Shelley Fisher Fishkin would dare to bring together in one book writers as diverse as Gloria Anzaldúa, Nicholas Black Elk, David Bradley, Abraham Cahan, S. Alice Callahan, Raymond Chandler, Frank Chin, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jessie Fauset, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Jovita González, Rolando Hinojosa, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Lawson Fusao Inada, James Weldon Johnson, Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Irena Klepfisz, Nella Larsen, Emma Lazarus, Sinclair Lewis, Genny Lim, Claude McKay, Herman Melville, N. Scott Momaday, William Northup, John Okada, Miné Okubo, Simon Ortiz, Américo Paredes, John P. Parker, Ann Petry, Tomás Rivera, Wendy Rose, Morris Rosenfeld, John Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Yoshiko Uchida, Tino Villanueva, Nathanael West, Walt Whitman, Richard Wright, Hisaye Yamamoto, Anzia Yezierska, and Zitkala-Ša.
Leading readers on an enticing journey across the borders of physical places and imaginative terrains, the book includes over 60 images, and extended excerpts from a variety of literary works. Each chapter ends with resources for further exploration. Writing America reveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art, changing their world and ours in the process.
Advance Praise
"Writing America is a triumph of scholarship and passion, a profound exploration of the many worlds which comprise our national canon ... a book that redraws the literary map of the United States."-Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
"This book cuts straight to the soul of America in all its shades and colors. I don't think anyone has ever put together a book that’s quite so extraordinary. I certainly have never read one."-Hal Holbrook, actor, Mark Twain Tonight!, author, Harold
"Just when you thought you knew American literature, along comes Shelley Fisher Fishkin to show you what you've missed . . . and to make you think about it. She ushers us into both familiar and unusual spaces with prose as accessible as it is learned, observations that are clear and sometimes quirky, and quotations that prove the synergy between literature and place. She takes American literature out of the library and relocates it in the public square, revealing its essence as the most eloquent tour guide imaginable."-David Bradley, author of South Street and The Chaneysville Incident
"This absorbing and wondrous book is a glorious cornucopia of America's literary memory. Writing America is necessary, delicious, and nourishing food for the American artist, reader and writer."-Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires
"What a fine, informative, and welcome book by Professor Fishkin. In brief, a first class piece of work that has been long in coming. It not only deserves a warm reception, it is also to be treasured by professionals as well as by beginners."-Rolando Hinojosa, novelist and essayist
"Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the best guide you could have through American literature and the places that inspired it. She writes like an angel. She appreciates the diversity and humor of the American spirit. Read her!"-Erica Jong, poet and author
"Writing America is designed for those who love not only literature, but also history and landscape, and the conversation they have with one another. I could not stop reading."-Philip Deloria, author of Playing Indian
"Smartly introduced, lavishly illustrated, and beautifully designed, Writing America treats the reader to sites associated with American authors and puts houses, landmarks, memorials, and museums into a vivid relationship with texts."-Werner Sollors, co-editor with Greil Marcus of A New Literary History of America
"Writing America presents us with an exquisitely rendered geography, in word and image alike, of the nation's diverse literary heritage."-Eric J. Sundquist, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University
"This book cuts straight to the soul of America in all its shades and colors. I don't think anyone has ever put together a book that’s quite so extraordinary. I certainly have never read one."-Hal Holbrook, actor, Mark Twain Tonight!, author, Harold
"Just when you thought you knew American literature, along comes Shelley Fisher Fishkin to show you what you've missed . . . and to make you think about it. She ushers us into both familiar and unusual spaces with prose as accessible as it is learned, observations that are clear and sometimes quirky, and quotations that prove the synergy between literature and place. She takes American literature out of the library and relocates it in the public square, revealing its essence as the most eloquent tour guide imaginable."-David Bradley, author of South Street and The Chaneysville Incident
"This absorbing and wondrous book is a glorious cornucopia of America's literary memory. Writing America is necessary, delicious, and nourishing food for the American artist, reader and writer."-Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires
"What a fine, informative, and welcome book by Professor Fishkin. In brief, a first class piece of work that has been long in coming. It not only deserves a warm reception, it is also to be treasured by professionals as well as by beginners."-Rolando Hinojosa, novelist and essayist
"Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the best guide you could have through American literature and the places that inspired it. She writes like an angel. She appreciates the diversity and humor of the American spirit. Read her!"-Erica Jong, poet and author
"Writing America is designed for those who love not only literature, but also history and landscape, and the conversation they have with one another. I could not stop reading."-Philip Deloria, author of Playing Indian
"Smartly introduced, lavishly illustrated, and beautifully designed, Writing America treats the reader to sites associated with American authors and puts houses, landmarks, memorials, and museums into a vivid relationship with texts."-Werner Sollors, co-editor with Greil Marcus of A New Literary History of America
"Writing America presents us with an exquisitely rendered geography, in word and image alike, of the nation's diverse literary heritage."-Eric J. Sundquist, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University
Marketing Plan
- Social media promotion on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest (#WritingAmerica)- Dedicated website at www.writingamerica.us- Nationwide author tour through 2016- Brochure- Bookmarks- National and international advertising: London Review of Books, Bookforum, Mother Jones, Library Journal, and more TBA
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9780813575971 |
PRICE | $42.95 (USD) |
Average rating from 7 members
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