Language, gender, and community in late twentieth -century fiction : american voices and american ... identities

Drawing on critical frameworks, this study establishes the centrality of language, gender, and community in the quest for identity in contemporary American fiction. Close readings of novels by Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, Ann Beattie, John Updike, Chang-rae Lee, and Rudolfo Anaya, among others, show how individuals find their American identities by finding their personal voices within a culturally diverse and gender conscious environment Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-19 Finding One’s Place by Finding One’s Voice in Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying and Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy ....Pages 21-49 Language and Gender in the Academic Communities of Ann Beattie’s Another You and John Updike’s Memories of the Ford Administration ....Pages 51-75 Balancing Self and Other through Speech and Silence in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker and Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses ....Pages 77-102 Love, Destruction, and Wounded Hearts in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris....Pages 103-137 Contours of the Future in Denise Chávez’s Face of an Angel and Rudolfo Anaya’s Alburquerque ....Pages 139-170 Twenty-First-Century Reflections on American Voices and American Identities....Pages 171-184 Back Matter....Pages 185-238