Displaying the top 100 results that match your query. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/rssapi.jsp?Re=3295&N=3+5205+4294965993&No=80 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=325145 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=268927 For added value, Asian Literature provides introductory essays that track the development and trends in Asian and Asian American literature, photographs, a map of East Asia and an annotated table of contents that helps students quickly identify specific authors. Title, author, genre and nationality indexes help speed research. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=274354 These interviews showcase three Native writers in dialogue with a European critic who becomes their partner in exploring individual and tribal identity, cultural survival and exploitation, and writing techniques. From Hartwig Isernhagens unique perspective, readers survey the growth of Native writing in the United States and Canada within the context of indigenous world literature. All three writers responded to the same series of questions by their European interviewer. The dialogues show how three major figures assess the contribution of modernism, post-modernism, and the realist tradition to contemporary Native literature.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=155910 W. E. B. DuBois elegantly dissected the double consciousness of African Americans; with similiar insight and vision, bell hooks untangles the complex personae of women writers, especially those whose work goes against the grain. Born and raised in the rural South, hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance off speaking her mind. This passion for words is the heartbeat of this contemplative collection of essays. Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing - the lasting power of the book. Once again, these essays reveal bell hookss wide-ranging intellectual scope - a universal writer addressing readers and writers everywhere.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=286838 What is African American literary art? Is it functional, or propaganda, or is it art for arts sake? What are the responsibilities of African American writers to their art forms, to themselves, and to their audiences? And what are the responsibilities of the audiences? Who shall judge it, and by what criteria shall it be judged? In African American Literary Criticism, 1773 to 2000, Hazel Arnett Ervin has assembled 60 critical statements that address these questions, ranging from public addresses to literary manifestos and credos, letters, journal entries, interviews, reviews, and studies by thinkers who have analyzed and evaluated literature and developed theory. Authors include W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, Langston Hughes, Ann Petry, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, Houston Baker, Henry Louis Gates, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and many others. Each statement is preceded by a short headnote annotating the writers thesis and setting the tone for critical reading and thinking; following each statement is a list of sources for further study on the topic. For scholars, students, and critics who are interested in ongoing discussions not only about the function of art, the role of the writer, and the artistic responsibility of the audience, but also about the epistemology, aesthetics, and methodology within a vibrant literary tradition, this reader is an essential source.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=274908 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=267926 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=325130 The Encyclopedia of American Literature represents a collaborative effort, involving 300 contributors from across the United States and Canada. Composed of more than 1,100 signed biographical-critical author entries, this Encyclopedia serves as both guide and companion to the study and appreciation of American literature. Readers will also discover 70 topical articles covering topics such as African American literature, feminism, modernism, the South and more. All topical and biographical entries are cross-referenced and linked to the author and subject index. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=278526 This definitive compendium of original and classic writing, photographs and drawings will establish itself as a must-have for readers interested in the Beats and in the evolution of American culture. The list of contributors is star-studded: from Ann Douglas to Joyce Johnson to Mikal Gilmore to Douglas Brinkley to Michael McClure to Johnny Depp to Patti Smith to Graham Parker to Lee Ranaldo to Richard Hell - the list goes on - the book is a whos who of writers and artists writing on a movement they belonged to, or that in some way inspired them.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=282486 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=323129 With analysis, factual contextual information, and historical documents, this book provides a detailed, but broad perspective on the most destructive event in history. Along with interviews with literary luminaries that personalize the war and help to make connections between the literature and the actual experiences of those involved, Meredith also provides rare historical documents that enhance the readers understanding of the military and political strategies of the major forces of the war. Each chapter provides a literary analysis of the most relevant literature for students on the topic of that chapter, followed by a historical overview of the aspect of the war that will aid the student to understand the historical context of the literature. This comprehensive casebook will be valuable for interdisciplinary study of World War II and the literature from that period most frequently taught in high school English and history classes.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=283808 A highly personal collection of intelligent essays and stunning photos that illuminate the phenomena that came to be known as the Beat Generation. 45 photos. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=128792 In this groundbreaking work, author Blake Allmendinger redefines western literature. Citing works by women and children, religious minorities and people of color long ignored, Allmendinger reflects western literatures creative diversity from the Civil War to the present and shows how the West and the Frontier continue to shape modern culture. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=261050 Now it is My Turn to Stand. At Acoma Pueblo meetings, members rise and announce their intention to speak. In that moment they are recognized and heard. In Speaking for the Generations, Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz brings together contemporary Native American writers to take their turn. Each offers an evocation of herself or himself, describing the personal, social, and cultural influences on her or his development as a writer. Although each writers viewpoint is personal and unique, together they reflect the rich tapestry of todays Native literature.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=287081 The first Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Sir Paul Harvey, was published in 1932 and quickly established itself as the standard source of reference for scholars, students, and general readers alike. In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, this well-loved text was thoroughly and sensitively revised to bring it up to date without losing its essential character, or the lightness of touch that made it such a pleasure to dip into. Since then it has been continually updated and revised to ensure that it remains an indispensable and authoritative companion, illuminating Chaucer, Wendy Cope, and everything in between. This new revision contains 15 entirely new survey articles by distinguished writers, addressing some of the key concepts and genres in modern literature, from Structuralism to Fantasy Literature.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=566330 Popular images of women in Mexico - conveyed through literature and, more recently, film and television - were long restricted to either the stereotypically submissive wife and mother or the demonized fallen woman. But new representations of women and their roles in Mexican society have shattered the ideological mirrors that reflected these images. This book explores this major change in the literary representation of women in Mexico. Maria Elena de Valdes enters into a selective examination of literary representation in its social context and a contestatory engagement of both the literary text and its place in the social reality of Mexico. Some of the topics she considers are Carlos Fuentes and the subversion of the social codes for women; the poetic ties between Sor Juana Ines de la Crus and Octavio Paz; questions of female identity in the writings of Rosario Castellanos, Luisa Josefina Hernandez, Maria Luisa Puga, and Elena Poniatowska; the Chicana writing of Sandra Cisneros; and the postmodern celebration - without reprobation - of being a woman in Laura Esquivels Like Water for Chocolate.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=62483 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=124564 Critical perspectives on works by Rudolfo A. Anaya, Nash Candelaria, and Richard Rodriguez. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=282315 In his books The Great Plains, The Great Frontier, and The Texas Rangers, historian Walter Prescott Webb created an enduring image of fearless, white, Anglo male settlers and lawmen bringing civilization to an American Southwest plagued with savage Indians and Mexicans. So popular was Webbs vision that it influenced generations of historians and artists in all media and effectively silenced the counter-narratives that Mexican American writers and historians were concurrently producing to claim their standing as gente decente, people of worth. These counter-narratives form the subject of Leticia M. Garza-Falcons study. She explores how prominent writers of Mexican descent - such as Jovita Gonzalez, Americo Paredes, Maria Cristina Mena, Fermina Guerra, Beatriz de la Garza, and Helena Maria Viramontes - have used literature to respond to the dominative history of the United States, which offered retrospective justification for expansionist policies in the Southwest and South Texas. Garza-Falcon shows how these counter-narratives capture a body of knowledge and experience excluded from official histories, whose facts often emerged more from literary techniques than from objective analysis of historical data. Garza-Falcon also draws on previously unused primary sources, including interviews and literature, to present a unique social-class analysis based on historical notions of identity and experience. Unlike traditional literary analysis, her work offers significant insights into the ongoing failure of the U.S. public education system to address the needs of children of Texas-Mexican (borderlands) ancestry.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=33955 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=217976 In his deeply felt new book, Andrew Delbanco -- author of the much praised Death of Satan (FSG, 1996) -- shows why these classic American writers remain indispensable in our age of uncertainty over what constitutes our common heritage. Required Reading is a work of gratitude and urgency, for, as Delbanco says, I have no doubt that the world is better for these books having been written, and I believe it is the responsibility of the critic to incite others to read them. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=77994 ABC-CLIOs Encyclopedia of Southern Literature surveys the regions major authors, works, movements, genres, and themes as a method of illustrating its contributions to American and world literature. The alphabetically arranged entries contain biographical and literary history along with bibliographic citations, critical commentary, and cross-references. Major works such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gone with the Wind, and Black Boy appear in separate entries. There are also extended essays on women in Southern literature, Robert E. Lee, humor, protest literature, the Mississippi River, the frontier tradition, the colonial and Civil War periods, theater, and regional writers. Emphasis is given to women writers, diarists, young adult literature, African-American writers, and recent bestsellers. A list of home states indicates the authors from each Southern state as well as the many writers born outside the region, including Fanny Kemble, Alex Haley, Ralph Ellison, Jackie Torrence, and Edgar Allan Poe. Other study aids include a list of major works and their publication dates, a chronology of cinematic versions of major titles, and a listing of primary sources. Student researchers, genealogists, folklorists, librarians and general readers will appreciate this compelling, definitive reference work on the American Souths contribution to the American and world literature.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=231838 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=89704 The writings of Asian-American women - whether born in America or transplanted from China, Japan, the Philippines, or India - have continued to reflect the complexities of their authors cultural milieus, the stories set in places as disparate as Japanese internment camps in Arizona, flamboyant Manila under Marcos, and the Chinatowns of California. Likewise, these writings have continued to reflect the ambiguities of their authors identities, the tensions of a female consciousness caught between cultures. The very voices of these stories - from Wongs polite autobiographical she and Yamamotos double telling to the splinters in Kingstons voice and Hagedorns polyglot - tell of the richness of writing by Asian-American women thus far.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=81791 The Oxford Companion to African American Literature provides the first comprehensive one-volume reference work devoted to this rich tradition, surveying the length and breadth of black literary history, focusing in particular on the lives and careers of more than 400 writers. Here, too, are general articles on the traditional literary genres, such as poetry, fiction, and drama; on genres of special import in African American letters, such as autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday school literature, and oratory; and on a wide spectrum of related topics, including journalism, the black periodical press, major libraries and research centers, religion, literary societies, womens clubs, and various publishing enterprises. Finally, the five-part, fifteen-page essay, Literary History, captures the full sweep of African American writing in the United States, from the colonial and early national eras right up to the present day. The Companion also features a comprehensive subject index; extensive cross-referencing; and bibliographies after almost every article.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=228757 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=248956 The Encyclopedia of Frontier Literature surveys 400 years of North American frontier literature. Within this literary context, the roles of women and minorities are given special attention, as is the expansion of the American West. The sheer scope of frontier literature is striking; this genre belongs as much to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Fenimore Cooper as it does to Willa Cather and Jessamyn West. From novels, short stories, and poetry to theater, oratory, outdoor dramas, songs, biographies, diaries, journals, and logbooks, frontier literature is characterized and unified by its rich expression of human experience. In the 94 alphabetized entries in this volume, readers will find dozens of authors and hundreds of works represented, as well as biographies, key concepts, terms, geographic locations, literary motifs, and dominant themes, including Explorers of the Frontier, Law and Order, Native Americans in Literature, Naturalists, and Poetry of the Frontier.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=231378 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=251490 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=238021 Loyalty to the community is the highest value in Native American cultures, argues Jace Weaver. In That the People Might Live, he explores a wide range of Native American literature from 1768 to the present, taking this sense of community as both a starting point and a lens. Weaver considers some of the best known Native American writers, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Vine Deloria, as well as many others who are receiving critical attention here for the first time. He contends that the single thing that most defines these authors writings, and makes them deserving of study as a literature separate from the national literature of the United States, is their commitment to Native community and its survival. He terms this commitment communitism - a fusion of community and activism. The Native American authors are engaged in an ongoing quest for community and write out of a passionate commitment to it. They write, literally that the People might live.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=281827 Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=183979 Masterpieces of Womens Literature features critical summaries and descriptions of the greatest works of literature by women authors. All the important facts and dates of authorship, along with analyses of characters, settings, themes, and plots, are included for works in every genre, including autobiographies, novels, poetry, plays, essays, and short stories. Containing works by women of all eras and backgrounds, this book covers everything from Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights to Germaine Greers The Female Eunuch, from Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin to Alice Walkers The Color Purple, as well as works by many lesser-known writers. The most in-depth reference of its kind, Masterpieces of Womens Literature is an indispensable guide for students and anyone interested in womens voices, throughout history as well as today.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=280732 Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=278430 Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=82415 A compact version of the authoritative and acclaimed Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Over 4000 entries provide quick and easy reference to writers and works from the classics of English literature to the best of modern writing; literature in English from around the world; novelists, poets, playwrights, critics, journalists, essayists; literary concepts, rhetorical terms, movements, groups; and detective writing, science fiction, childrens literature.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=254709 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=278429 Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=231407 Women Writers in the United States is a celebration of the many forms of work - written and social, tangible and intangible - produced by American women. Furthering their work in The Oxford Companion to Womens Writing in the United States, Davis and West document the variety and volume of womens work in the United States in a clear and accessible timeline format. They present information on the full spectrum of womens writing - including fiction, poetry, biography, political manifestos, essays, advice columns, and cookbooks - alongside a chronology of developments in social and cultural history that are especially pertinent to womens lives. This extensive chronology illustrates the diversity of women who have lived and written in the United States and creates a sense of the full trajectory of individual careers. A valuable and rich source of information on womens studies, literature, and history, Women Writers in the United States will enable readers to locate familiar and unfamiliar womens texts and to place them in the context out of which they emerged.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=188588 Includes a brief biography of John Steinbeck, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=131521 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=329022 The text provides an interpretative base for readers seeking a greater understanding of gothic writing and the literature of terror. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=254366 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=146626 A region where dances for rain and prayers to the santos mix with New Age and high-tech jargon has produced some of the most exciting writing in America today. The common thread that links such writers as Edward Abbey, Tony Hillerman, Joy Harjo, Barbara Kingsolver, and Terry McMillan is an understanding of the interplay between humans and the earth. This compelling collection offers outstanding selections of contemporary Southwestern literature along with a biographical profile, a bibliography, and an original interview with each of the fourteen authors included. Here are the words of rangy Frank Waters, who at ninety-three is still the dean of Western writers; the rhythms of Navajo songs, in the poetry of Native American Luci Tapahonso; the political, highly charged prose of John Nichols, in his classic The Milagro Beanfield War; and the magical realism of Rudolfo Anaya, one of the founders of Chicano literature. Diverse in style and focus, the authors of the Southwest are united by a sense of place and an awareness of the heritage and textures of this multicultural, multilingual land.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=87043 Here is a gold mine of information about womens writing, womens history, and womens concerns - 771 entries, ranging from short biographies to extensive essays. The Oxford Companion to Womens Writing in the United States provides a comprehensive, authoritative, and highly informative survey of women writers and their work as it also illuminates the issues that fired their imaginations. The volume boasts contributions by many of todays well-known cultural and literary critics, including Susan Faludi writing on backlash, Deborah Tannen on communication between the sexes, Jane Gallop on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Sidonie Smith on autobiography, Trudier Harris on passing, Nancy Armstrong on daughters, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis on poetry. There are over four hundred biographical profiles of not only important poets, novelists, and playwrights (including such contemporary figures as Wendy Wasserstein, Louise Erdrich, Anne Tyler, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Annie Dillard, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, and Tama Janowitz), but also of women writers who have made important contributions in other fields - Margaret Mead, Betty Friedan, Rachel Carson, and Susan B. Anthony. Perhaps most important, there is extensive coverage of the many personal, cultural, and historical issues that have been explored by, and have influenced the lives and productivity of, women writers: race and racism, violence and sexual harassment, health, AIDS, the Civil War, the womens movement, and much more. There is also coverage of the publishing world (womens bookstores and presses), the art and practice of writing, and contemporary literary criticism (including deconstruction, black feminism, and lesbian literary theory).--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=128117 New York Citys immensity, diversity, and drive have long been a magnet for American artists. Literary historian Shaun OConnell brings this legacy to life in Unspeakable New York. Analyzing the work of more than one hundred New York writers, OConnell shows how established members of the literary pantheon (Henry James, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, Dorothy Parker, Saul Bellow), contemporary writers (Bret Easton Ellis, Oscar Hijuelos, E.L. Doctorow, Lynne Sharon Schwartz), and some surprising names from the past (Horatio Alger, Jacob Riis) have responded to the Citys unique demands and opportunities. Remarkable, Unspeakable New York draws on works of fiction, drama, memoir, poetry, and travel writing to build a new understanding of New Yorks place in the American imagination.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=27565 Curious about the lives of Auden, Tennessee Williams, Hemingway, or Samuel Beckett? Need to know when James Baldwin published Notes of a Native Son? A Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers provides the answers. More than 1,000 biographical entries profile novelists, short-story writers, poets, and playwrights from the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, India, Africa, and the Caribbean. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=786538 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=81700 Concisely told and full of fascinating detail, The Birth of the Beat Generation chronicles the life and times of the maverick poets and novelists William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, as well as the San Francisco group, which included Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder. It also evokes the figures surrounding them, including Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, and Peter Orlovsky. This is the first book to link the Beats to one another, explaining how they became a group and tracing the connections between Beat lives and such Beat literature as Kerouacs On the Road, Ginsbergs Howl and Other Poems, and Burroughs Naked Lunch. Accompanying the text are maps, more than one hundred photographs, two sociograms, quotations from Beat works and conversation, chronologies, and a vast lexicon of the slang that defines the nuances and complexities of the Beat world and mind.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=200105 Following a historical overview, this book presents works by Piri Thomas, Sandra Cisneros, Nicholasa Mohr, Robert Fernandez, Luis Omar Salinas, Angelo de Hoyos, Pat Mora, Sandra Maria Esteves, and Martin Espada, among others. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=180864 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=157322 For the sixth edition, James D. Hart and Phillip Leininger have updated the Companion in light of what has happened in American literature since 1982. To this end, they have revised the entries on such established authors as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Joyce Carol Oates, and they have added more than 180 new entries on novelists (T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tim OBrien, Louise Erdrich, Don De Lillo), poets (Rita Dove, Weldon Kees), playwrights (Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson), popular writers (Stephen King, Louis LAmour), historians (James M. McPherson, David Herbert Donald, William Manchester), naturalists (Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey), and literary critics (Camille Paglia, Richard Ellmann). In addition, the Companion boasts more womens, African-American, and ethnic voices, with new entries on such luminaries as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, M. F. K. Fisher, William Least Heat-Moon, Ursula Le Guin, and Oscar Hijuelos, among many others. With over 5,000 total entries, The Oxford Companion to American Literature reflects a dynamic balance between past and contemporary literature, surveying virtually every aspect of our national literature, from the Pulitzer Prize to pulp fiction, and from Walt Whitman to William F. Buckley, Jr. There are over 2,000 biographical profiles of important American authors (with information regarding their styles, subjects, and major works) and influential foreign writers as well as other figures who have been important in the nations social and cultural history. There are more than 1,100 full summaries of important American novels, stories, essays, poems (with verse form noted), plays, biographies and autobiographies, tracts, narratives, and histories. The new edition provides historical background and astute commentary on literary schools and movements, literary awards, magazines, newspapers, and a wide variety of other matters directly related to writing in America. Finally, the book is thoroughly cross-referenced and features an extensive and fully updated index of literary and social history.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=146748 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=151791 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=258245 By restoring interracial dimensions left out of accounts of the Harlem Renaissance-or blamed for corrupting it-George Hutchinson transforms our understanding of black (and white) literary modernism, interracial literary relations, and twentieth-century cultural nationalism in the United States. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=260470 Barrios and Borderlands paints a portrait of the complex and fascinating mixture of Latino cultures in the United States today. This unique anthology embraces a broad range of genres, disciplines and ethnicities, and highlights the diversity of Latino cultural expressions. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=81317 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=133738 This dynamic collection of contemporary short prose, poems, and songs by 44 Native North American authors contains stories about the spirit world, the wilderness, and the joy and sadness of native people in the United States and Canada. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=122341 In this collection of fourteen essays, Anne Scott MacLeod locates and describes shifts in the American concept of childhood as those changes are suggested in nearly two centuries of childrens stories. A social historian and literary critic of genuine insight, MacLeod has helped to pioneer an approach to American culture through the childrens literature that arises from it: When I read books written for children, MacLeod comments in her preface, I look for authors views, certainly, but I also try to discover what the culture is saying about itself, about the present and the future, and about the nature and purposes of childhood....Childrens books dont mirror their culture, but they do always, no matter how indirectly, convey some of its central truths. Most of the essays concern domestic novels for children - stories set more or less in the time of their publication and meant for adolescent and teen readers. Some essays also draw creatively on childhood memoirs, travel writings that contain foreigners observations of American children, and other studies of childrens literature. MacLeod looks beyond the books to their unwritten subtexts - to the interplay between writers adherence to conventions, their own memories of youth, and their adult concerns. She probes as well the tension between the literal, superficial images and themes of the stories and the realities of the surrounding culture. Beading across historical periods, MacLeod traces changes in our attitudes toward children and shows how they have paralleled or departed from the characteristic tone of each era. The topics on which she writes range from the recently politicized marketplace for childrens books to the reestablishment (and reconfiguration) of the family in the latest childrens fiction to the ways that literature challenges or enforces the idealization of children. MacLeod sometimes considers a single authors canon, as when she discusses the feminism of the Nancy Drew mystery series or the Orwellian vision of Robert Cormier. At other times, she looks at a variety of works within a particular period, for example, Jacksonian America, the post-World War II decade, or the 1970s. MacLeod examines anew books that she feels have been too quickly dismissed - the Horatio Alger stories, for example - and finds fresh, intriguing ways to view the work of such well-known writers as Louisa May Alcott, Beverly Cleary, and Paul Zindel. Five of the essays in American Childhood have never before been published; four of the remaining essays have been substantially revised and expanded since they first appeared. All are a testament to the revelatory powers of childrens literature and to our deep emotional investment in young people.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=87458 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=88375 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=174406 Now students can turn to a single, comprehensive source for biography and criticism of Native North American authors from both the written and oral traditions. Overview essays are followed by author entries that include biographical data, critical material excerpted from books, magazines and literary reviews, a list of further sources and interviews, when available. Other features include photographs, a map showing tribal areas and major cultural groups and indexes to titles, authors genres and major tribal affiliations. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=225799 A reliable, useful guide to American authors and an excellent prompt for remembering books read long ago, this guide summarizes, explains, and evaluates the greatest works of American literature--including Steinbeck, Morrison, Cheever, Sandburg, and many others. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=243499 Drawing on history, psychology, folklore, linguistics, anthropology, and the arts, this book challenges wooden Indian stereotypes to redefine negative attitudes and humorless approaches to Native American peoples. Moving from tribal culture to interethnic literature, Lincoln explores such topics as the traditional Trickster of origin myths, historical ironies, Euroamericans playing Indian, feminist Indian humor at home, contemporary painters and playwrights reinventing Coyote, popular mixed-blood music, and Red English. Lincoln turns to the texts of Native American authors including Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and N. Scott Momaday, to illustrate the rich tradition of Native American humor: a tradition that evolved as the result of and has survived in spite of a history of unconscionable suffering and sadness during the course of which ninety-seven percent of the native populations were destroyed. A study of the literary humor of poets like Paula Gunn Allen, Diane Burns, and Linda Hogan provides further evidence of the importance of the role of humor in Native American culture. Indin Humor documents and interprets the contexts of laughter among Native Americans, as they see and are seen by the rest of the world. The study comes to focus comically on the poets, visual artists, playwrights, and novelists who make up the cultural renaissance of the past twenty years. Focusing on ethnic humor, from jokes in bars and powwows, to intercultural politics, to literature, Indin Humor will enlighten and entertain readers interested in Native American culture, as well as scholars of Amen can and Ethnic Studies, and humor theorists.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=248260 Substantially enlarged and updated, this new edition of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English confirms its status as the most authoritative survey of its subject now available in a single volume. Its coverage of novelists, poets, playwrights and their works embraces both the established classics of English literature and a wealth of contemporary figures from all over the English-speaking world, such as Saul Bellow, Adrienne Rich, Les Murray, Wole Soyinka, R. K. Narayan, Janet Frame, Mordecai Richler, Joseph Brodsky, J. M. Coetzee and Ben Okri. Under Ian Ousbys editorship over a hundred contributors provide detailed biographical and critical articles, not only about writers and works of literature, but also about the critics, philosophers, historians and biographers who have influenced or reacted to literature. Substantial coverage is given to popular genres such as science fiction, detective novels and childrens literature, with entries on, for example, Dr. Seuss, Margaret Mahy, Roald Dahl, Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, P. D. James and Nicolas Freeling. Other entries range widely over literary groups and movements, critical schools, genres, poetic forms, critical concepts, rhetorical terms, literary terms, theatres and theatre companies. There are also substantive articles on subjects such as copyright, libraries and the English language. With a superb range of illustrations and a comprehensive cross-referencing system, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English is both an outstanding reference book, and a delightful companion for anyone who enjoys reading.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=260443 Focusing on the comic genius of Flannery OConnor, Anthony Di Renzo reveals a dimension of her work that has been overlooked by both her supporters and her detractors, most of whom have concentrated exclusively on her use of theology and parable. Di Renzo compares the bizarre comedy in OConnors stories and novels to that of medieval narrative, art, folklore, and drama. Noting an especial kinship between her characters and the grotesqueries that adorn the margins of illuminated manuscripts and the facades of European cathedrals, he argues that OConnors Gothicism brings her tales closer in spirit to the English mystery cycles and the leering gargoyles of medieval architecture than to the Gothic fiction of Poe and Hawthorne with which critics have so often linked her work. For Di Renzo the grotesqueness of OConnors strange comedy is not a limitation but an accomplishment, deeply rooted in medieval art and satire. OConnors peculiar world, he insists, must be accepted on its own terms without consideration of whether it is ugly. Like the monstrosities carved on the walls at the monastery of Clairvaux, which St. Bernard describes in a famous letter, OConnors characters - her rednecks and misfits, her selfish matrons and berserk evangelists - are deformis formosita ac formosa deformitas, beautifully hideous, hideously beautiful. Relying partly on Mikhail Bakhtins analysis of Rabelais, Di Renzo examines the different forms of the grotesque in OConnors fiction and their parallels in medieval art, literature, and folklore. He begins by demonstrating that the figure of Christ is the ideal behind her satire - an ideal, however, that must be degraded as well as exalted if it is ever to be a living presence in the physical world. Di Renzo goes on to discuss OConnors unusual treatment of the human body and its relationship to medieval fabliaux. He depicts the interplay between the saintly and the demonic in her work, illustrating how for her good is just as grotesque as evil because it is still something under construction. And finally he argues that apocalypse is the culmination of the grotesque in OConnors fiction; it is a renewal in destruction, a violent juxtaposition of death and rebirth. For Flannery OConnor Judgment Day is a cosmic Mardi Gras.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=36461 This collection of thirteen essays on American literature and culture defines and examines a gothic tradition in frontier writing. As the imaginative border between the known and the unknown, the frontier subject has provided a bridge to gothic domains and has been used by writers from every period in American history to explore social, ethnic, and gender frontiers, as well as frontiers of art and language. The frontier gothic world, for all of its ambiguity and ambivalence, is nevertheless immanent, palpable, and undeniably present, and it impinges significantly upon the conventional world, forcing that world to change, to adapt, to transform itself or be destroyed. The essays consider canonical writers such as Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville; they also discuss Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edward Abbey, William Gibson, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Silko, and Rudolfo Anaya. Also included is a previously uncollected short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Giant Wistaria, discussed by essayist Gary Scharnhorst as A Hieroglyph of the Female Frontier Gothic. In American literature, the frontier gothic tradition expresses the spirit of a nation proud of its pragmatic realism and hungry for romance, vigorously pursuing a manifest destiny in the light of day, yet troubled and enraptured by gothic intimations of twilight apparitions, midnight curses, and the demons that haunt the last hour before dawn.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=138984 In the books available to Patricia Riley as a child, Native Americans were almost always depicted as exotic, cultural artifacts from the past, the stereotypical Vanishing Americans, sometimes noble, but always backward savages on their way out, and soon to be no more. It was only later in life that she discovered that the experience of growing up Native American has produced some of the most moving and powerful works of fiction and nonfiction ever written. Now, for the first time ever, these writings about childhood have been collected in an anthology that makes connections across history - while speaking to the enormous diversity of lives that make up Native America today. Selections range from recollections of first buffalo hunts to a story of a rebel girl in the 1960s, from remembrances of the mandatory boarding schools in the early part of the century to tales of modern suburban alienation. Here are short stories, excerpts from novels, and autobiographical sketches, from Canada and the United States, by the best-loved names in Native American writing. And here, too, are funny and haunting stories from provocative new and lesser-known voices. A collection of pain, love, youthful passion, mischief, anger, betrayal, and healing, Growing Up Native American is essential reading for anyone interested in the experiences of Native American people. Including selections from acclaimed works by some of the most accomplished prose stylists and story-tellers writing today it is an excellent introduction to one of the worlds great literatures.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=27717 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=140470 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1743823 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=215633 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison brings the genius of a master writer to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Her goal, she states at the outset, is to put forth an argument for extending the study of American literature...draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World--without the mandate for conquest. Author of Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and other vivid portrayals of black American experience, Morrison ponders the effect that living in a historically racialized society has had on American writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that race has become a metaphor, a way of referring to forces, events, and forms of social decay, economic division, and human panic. Her compelling point is that the central characteristics of American literature--individualism, masculinity, the insistence upon innocence coupled to an obsession with figurations of death and hell--are responses to a dark and abiding Africanist presence. Through her investigation of black characters, narrative strategies, and idiom in the fiction of white American writers, Morrison provides a daring perspective that is sure to alter conventional notions about American literature. She considers Willa Cather and the impact of race on concept and plot; turns to Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville to examine the black force that figures so significantly in the literature of early America; and discusses the implications of the Africanist presence at the heart of Huckleberry Finn. A final chapter on Ernest Hemingway is a brilliant exposition of the racial subtext that glimmers beneath the surface plots of his fiction. Written with the artistic vision that has earned her a preeminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=26211 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=146962 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=150306 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=154228 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=130734 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=140206 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=133016 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=84367 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=132543 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=26114 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=36155 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=16330 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=131056 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=132732 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=132744 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=62096 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=143023 A selection of criticism, arranged in chronological order of publication, devoted to the writings of Vladimir Nabokov. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=152522 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=140004 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=33792 A collection of ten critical essays on ONeills play, arranged in chronological order of their original publication. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=32551 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=132737 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=84226 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=83011 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=57376 This book offers concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information presented in a user-friendly format for book reports and term papers. Most importantly, it condenses extensive critical research into one compact student handbook. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=152851 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=83895 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=28614 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=312375 A guide to reading To Kill A Mockingbird with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the authors life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.