born ZZ Packer (1973- ),
Sportswriter (1986), and its sequel,
McPherson’s student at the Iowa
Independence Day (l995). The lat-
Writers’ Workshop, was raised in
ter is about Frank Bascombe, a
the South, studied in the mid-
dreamy, evasive drifter who loses
Atlantic, and now lives in California.
all the things that give his life
Her first work, a volume of stories
meaning – a son, his dream of writ-
titled Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
ing fiction, his marriage, lovers and
(2003), has made her a rising star.
friends, and his job. Bascombe is
Prolific feminist writer bell hooks
sensitive and intelligent — his
(born Gloria Watkins in Kentucky in
choices, he says, are made “to
1952) gained fame for cultural cri-
deflect the pain of terrible regret”
tiques including Black Looks: Race
RICHARD FORD
— and his emptiness, along with
and Representation (l992) and
the anonymous malls and bald new
autobiographies beginning with
housing developments that he end-
Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
lessly cruises through, mutely tes-
(1996).
tify to Ford’s vision of a national
Experimental poet and scholar
malaise.
of slave narratives ( Freeing the
Many African-American writers
Soul, l999), Harryette Mullen (1953- )
hail from the South, including
writes multivocal poetry collec-
Ernest Gaines from Louisiana,
tions such as Muse & Drudge
Alice Walker from Georgia, and
(1995). Novelist and story writer
Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston,
Percival Everett (1956- ), who was
Photo © Don MacLellan /
whose 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were
CORBIS SYGMA
originally from Georgia, writes sub-
145
tle, open-ended fiction; recent volumes are
are a concatenation of the personal and the polit-
Frenzy (l997) and Glyph (1999).
ical. Kent Haruf (1943- ) creates stronger char-
Many African-American writers whose families
acters in his sweeping novel of the prairie,
followed patterns of internal migration were
Plainsong (1999).
born outside the South but return to it for inspi-
Michael Cunningham (1952- ), from Ohio,
ration. Famed science-fiction novelist Octavia
began as a domestic novelist in A Home at the
Butler (l947- ), from California, draws on the
End of the World (1990). The Hours (1998), made theme of bondage and the slave narrative tradi-into a movie, brilliantly interweaves Virginia
tion in Wild Seed (l980); her Parable of the Sower Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with two women’s lives in (l993) treats addiction. Sherley Anne Williams
different eras. Stuart Dybek (1942- ) has written (l944- ), also from California, writes of interracial sparkling story collections including I Sailed With friendship between southern women in slave
Magellan (2003), about his childhood on the times in her fact-based historical novel Dessa South Side of Chicago.
Rose (l986). New York-born Randall Kenan (l963- ) Younger urban novelists include Jonathan
was raised in North Carolina, the setting of his
Franzen (1959- ), who was born in Missouri and
novel A Visitation of Spirits (l989) and his stories raised in Illinois. Franzen’s best-selling
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (l992). His Walking panoramic novel The Corrections (2001) — titled on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the for a downturn in the stock market — evokes
Twenty-First Century (1999) is nonfiction.
midwestern family life over several generations.
The novel chronicles the physical and mental
The Midwest
deterioration of a patriarch suffering from
The vast plains of America’s midsection —
Parkinson’s disease; as in Smiley’s A Thousand much of it between the Rocky Mountains and the
Acres, the entire family is affected. Franzen pits Mississippi River — scorch in summer and freeze
individuals against large conspiracies in The
in scouring winter storms. The area was opened
Twenty-Seventh City (1988) and Strong Motion up with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825,
(1992). Some critics link Franzen with Don
attracting Northern European settlers eager for
DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster
land. Early 20th-century writers with roots in the Wallace as a writer of conspiracy novels.
Midwest include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
The Midwest has produced a wide variety of
Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and Theodore Dreiser.
writing, much of it informed by international
Midwestern fiction is grounded in realism.
influences. Richard Powers (1957- ), from
The domestic novel has flourished in recent
Illinois, has lived in Thailand and The
years, portraying webs of relationships between
Netherlands. His challenging postmodern novels
kin, the local community, and the environment.
interweave personal lives with technology.
Agribusiness and development threaten family
Galatea 2.2 (1995) updates the mad scientist farms in some parts of the region, and some nov-theme; the scientists in this case are computer
els sound the death knell of farming as a way programmers.
of life.
frican-American novelist Charles Johnson
Domestic novelists include Jane Smiley (1949-),
(1948- ), an ex-cartoonist who was born in
A
whose A Thousand Acres (1991) is a contempo-Illinois and moved to Seattle,
rary, feminist version of the King Lear story. The Washington, draws on disparate traditions such
lost kingdom is a large family farm held for four
as Zen and the slave narrative in novels such as
generations, and the forces that undermine it
Oxherding Tale (1982). Johnson’s accomplished, 146
picaresque novel Middle Passage (1990) blends include the oilman versus the ecologist, the
the international history of slavery with a sea tale developer versus the archaeologist, and the citi-echoing Moby-Dick. Dreamer (1998) re-imagines zen activist versus the representative of nuclear
the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and military facilities, many of which are housed
Robert Olen Butler (1945- ), born in Illinois and
in the sparsely populated West.
a veteran of the Vietnam War, writes about
One writer has cast a long shadow over west-
Vietnamese refugees in Louisiana in their own
ern writing, much as William Faulkner did in the
voices in A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain South. Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) records the
(1992). His stories in Tabloid Dreams (1996) —
passing of the western wilderness. In his mas-
inspired by zany news headlines — were enlarged
terpiece Angle of Repose (1971), a historian into the humorous novel Mr. Spaceman (2000), in imagines his educated grandparents’ move to the
which a space alien learns English from watching
“wild” West. His last book surveys his life in the television and abducts a bus full of tourists in
West as a writer: Where the Bluebird Sings to the order to interview them on his spaceship.
Lemonade Springs (1992). For a quarter century, Native-American authors from the region
Stegner directed Stanford University’s writing
include part-Chippewa Louise Erdrich, who has
program; his list of students reads like a “who’s
set a series of novels in her native North Dakota.
who” of western writing: Raymond Carver, Ken
Gerald Vizenor (1935- ) gives a comic, postmod-
Kesey, Thomas McGuane, Larry McMurtry, N.
ern portrait of contemporary Native-American
Scott Momaday, Tillie Olsen, and Robert Stone.
life in Darkness at Saint Louis Bearheart (1978) Stegner also influenced the contemporary
and Griever: An American Monkey King in China
Montana school of writers associated with
(1987). Vizenor’s Chancers (2000) deals with McGuane, Jim Harrison, and some works of
skeletons buried outside of their homelands.
Richard Ford, as well as Texas writers like
Popular Syrian-American novelist Mona
McMurtry.
Simpson (1957- ), who was born in Wisconsin, is
ovelist Thomas McGuane (1939- ) typically
the author of Anywhere But Here (1986), a look at depicts one man going alone into a wild
N
mother-daughter relationships.
area, where he engages in an escalating
conflict. His works include The Sporting Club
The Mountain West
(1968) and The Bushwacked Piano (1971), in The western interior of the United States is a
which the hero travels from Michigan to Montana
largely wild area that stretches along the majes-
on a demented mission of courtship. McGuane’s
tic Rocky Mountains running slantwise from
enthusiasm for hunting and fishing has led critics Montana at the Canadian border to the hills of
to compare him with Ernest Hemingway.
Texas on the U.S. border with Mexico. Ranching
Michigan-born Jim Harrison (1937- ), like
and mining have long provided the region’s McGuane, spent many years living on a ranch. In economic backbone, and the Anglo tradition in his first novel, Wolf: A False Memoir (1971), a the region emphasizes an independent frontier man seeks to view a wolf in the wild in hopes of spirit.
changing his life. His later, more pessimistic fic-Western literature often incorporates con-
tion includes Legends of the Fall (1979) and The flict. Traditional enemies in the 19th-century
Road Home (1998).
West are the cowboy versus the Indian, the
In Richard Ford’s Montana novel Wildlife
farmer/settler versus the outlaw, the rancher
(1990), the desolate landscape counterpoints a
versus the cattle rustler. Recent antagonists
family’s breakup. Story writer, eco-critic, and
147
nature essayist Rick Bass (1958- ),
Cisneros extended her vignettes of
born in Texas and educated as a
Chicana women’s lives in Woman
petroleum geologist, writes of ele-
Hollering Creek (1991). Pat Mora
mental confrontations between
(1942- ) offers a Chicana view in
outdoorsmen and nature in his
Nepantla: Essays From the Land in
story collection In the Loyal
the Middle (1993), which addresses
Mountains (1995) and the novel
issues of cultural conservation.
Where the Sea Used To Be (1998).
Native Americans from the
Texan Larry McMurtry (1936- )
region include the late James
draws on his ranch childhood in
Welch, whose The Heartsong of
Horseman, Pass By (1961), made
Charging Elk (2000) imagines a
into the movie Hud in 1963, an
young Sioux who survives the Battle
unsentimental portrait of the
of Little Bighorn and makes a life in
rancher’s world. Leaving Cheyenne
France. Linda Hogan (l947- ), from
(1963) and its successor, The Last
Colorado and of Chickasaw her-
Picture Show (1966), which was
itage, reflects on Native-American
also made into a film, evoke the
women and nature in novels includ-
fading of a way of life in Texas small
ing Mean Spirit (1990), about the oil
towns. McMurtry’s best-known
rush on Indian lands in the 1920s,
work is Lonesome Dove (1985), an
and Power (1998), in which an
archetypal western epic novel
Indian woman discovers her own
about a cattle drive in the 1870s
inner natural resources.
that became a successful television
miniseries. His recent works
The Southwest
include Comanche Moon (1997).
For centuries, the desert
The West of multiethnic writers
Southwest developed under
is less heroic and often more for-
Spanish rule, and much of the pop-
ward looking. One of the best-
ulation continues to speak Spanish,
known Chicana writers is Sandra
while some Native-American tribes
Cisneros (1954- ). Born in Chicago,
reside on ancestral lands. Rainfall
Cisneros has lived in Mexico and
is unreliable, and agriculture has
LARRY MCMURTRY
Texas; she focuses on the large cul-
always been precarious in the
tural border between Mexico and
region. Today, massive irrigation
the United States as a creative,
projects have boosted agricultural
contradictory zone in which
production, and air conditioning
Mexican-American women must
attracts more and more people to
reinvent themselves. Her best-sell-
sprawling cities like Salt Lake City
ing The House on Mango Street
in Utah and Phoenix in Arizona.
(1984), a series of interlocking
In a region where the desert
vignettes told from a young girl’s
ecology is so fragile, it is not sur-
viewpoint, blazed the trail for other
prising that there are many environ-
Latina writers and introduced read-
mentally oriented writers. The
ers to the vital Chicago barrio.
Photo © Richard Robinson
activist Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
148
celebrated the desert wilderness
white woman at the turn of the
of Utah in Desert Solitaire: A Season
20th century.
in the Wilderness (1968).
Numerous Mexican-American
Trained as a biologist, Barbara
writers reside in the Southwest, as
Kingsolver (1955- ) offers a
they have for centuries. Distinctive
woman’s viewpoint on the
concerns include the Spanish lan-
Southwest in her popular trilogy
guage, the Catholic tradition, folk-
set in Arizona: The Bean Trees
loric forms, and, in recent years,
(1988), featuring Taylor Greer, a
race and gender inequality, genera-
tomboyish young woman who takes
tional conflict, and political
in a Cherokee child; Animal Dreams
activism. The culture is strongly
(1990); and Pigs in Heaven (1993).
patriarchal, but new female Chicana
The Poisonwood Bible (1998) con-
voices have arisen.
cerns a missionary family in Africa.
The poetic nonfiction book
Kingsolver addresses political
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
themes unapologetically, admitting,
Mestiza (1987), by Gloria Anzaldúa
“I want to change the world.”
(1942- ), passionately imagines a
The Southwest is home to the
hybrid feminine consciousness of
greatest number of Native-
the borderlands made up of strands
American writers, whose works
from Mexican, Native-American,
reveal rich mythical storytelling, a
and Anglo cultures. Also noteworthy
spiritual treatment of nature, and
is New Mexican writer Denise
deep respect for the spoken word.
Chavez (1948- ), author of the story
The most important fictional
collection The Last of the Menu
theme is healing, understood as
Girls (l986). Her Face of an Angel
restoration of harmony. Other top-
(1994), about a waitress who has
ics include poverty, unemployment,
been working on a manual for wait-
alcoholism, and white crimes
resses for 30 years, has been called
against Indians.
an authentically Latino novel in
Native-American writing is more
English.
philosophical than angry, however,
SANDRA CISNEROS
and it projects a strong ecological
California Literature
vision. Major authors include the
California could be a country all
distinguished N. Scott Momaday,
its own with its enormous multieth-
who inaugurated the contemporary
nic population and huge economy.
Native-American novel with House
The state is known for spawning
Made of Dawn; his recent works
social experiments, youth move-
include The Man Made of Words
ments (the Beats, hippies,
(1997). Part-Laguna novelist Leslie
techies), and new technologies
Marmon Silko, the author of
(the “dot-coms” of Silicon Valley)
Ceremony, has also published
that can have unexpected
Gardens in the Dunes (1999), evok-
consequences.
Photo: Associated Press /
ing Indigo, an orphan cared for by a
Wide World Photos
Northern California, centered on
149
San Francisco, enjoys a liberal,
clude Karen Tei Yamashita (1951- ),
even utopian literary tradition seen
born and raised in California, whose
in Jack London and John Steinbeck.
nine-year stay in Brazil inspired
It is home to hundreds of writers,
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
including Native American Gerald
(1990) and Brazil-Maru (1992). Her
Vizenor, Chicana Lorna Dee
Tropic of Orange (1997) evokes
Cervantes, African Americans Alice
polyglot Los Angeles. Japanese-
Walker and Ishmael Reed, and
American fiction writers build on
internationally minded writers like
the early work of Toshio Mori,
Norman Rush (1933- ), whose novel
Hisaye Yamamoto, and Janice
Mating (1991) draws on his years
Mirikitani.
in Africa.
Southern California literature
Northern California houses a
has a very different tradition asso-
rich tradition of Asian-American
ciated with the newer city of Los
writing, whose characteristic
Angeles, built by boosters and land
themes include family and gender
developers despite the obvious
roles, the conflict between genera-
problem of lack of water resources.
tions, and the search for identity.
Los Angeles was from the start a
Maxine Hong Kingston helped kin-
commercial enterprise; it is not
dle the renaissance of Asian-
surprising that Hollywood and
American writing, at the same time
Disneyland are some of its best-
popularizing the fictionalized mem-
known legacies to the world. As if
oir genre.
to counterbalance its shiny facade,
Another Asian-American writer
a dystopian strain of Southern
from California is novelist Amy Tan,
California writing has flourished,
whose best-selling The Joy Luck
inaugurated by Nathanael West’s
Club became a hit film in 1993. Its
Hollywood novel, The Day of the
interlinked story-like chapters
Locust (1939).
delineate the different fates of
Loneliness and alienation stalk
four mother-and-daughter pairs.
the creations of Gina Berriault
Tan’s novels spanning historical
(1926–1999), whose characters eke
AMY TAN
China and today’s United States
out stunted lives lived in rented
include The Hundred Secret Senses
rooms in Women in Their Beds
(1995), about half-sisters, and The
(1996). Joan Didion (1934- ) evokes
Bonesetter’s Daughter
(2001),
the free-floating anxiety of
about a daughter’s care for her
California in her brilliant essays
mother. The refreshing, witty Gish
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Jen (1955- ), whose parents emi-
(1968). In 2003, Didion penned
grated from Shanghai, authored the
Where I Was From, a narrative
lively novels Typical American
account of how her family moved
(1991) and Mona in the Promised
west with the frontier and settled in
Land (1996).
California. Another Angelino,
Photo: Associated Press /
Japanese-American writers in-
Graylock
Dennis Cooper (1953- ), writes cool
150
novels about an underworld of numb, alienated
The Northwest
men.
In recent decades, the mountainous, densely
Thomas Pynchon best captured the strange
forested Northwest, centered around Seattle in
combination of ease and unease that is Los
the state of Washington, has emerged as a cul-
Angeles in his novel about a vast conspiracy of
tural center known for liberal views and a pas-
outcasts, The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon inspired sionate appreciation of nature. Its most influen-the prolific postmodernist William Vollmann
tial recent writer was Raymond Carver.
(l959- ), who has gained popularity with youthful, David Guterson (1956- ), born in Seattle,
counterculture readers for his long, surrealistic
gained a wide read