Hello guys! This is the last week and we are talking about the
contemporary period. I found out these readings very interesting due to the
fact that I knew that there are a lot of immigrants in the USA and that every
year arrive more and more. However, I could not imagine that they were so many
as VanSpanckeren
(2001) points out “Some one million new immigrants arrive each year, many from Asia and
Latin America” (p. 136). It was surprising for me to realize this because it is
amazing to see how this country has influence on different people from
different parts of the world. I consider that thanks to many of those immigrants
the US literature was developed due to there are many non-native American
writers that are important figures because their works have made amazing
contributions to the American literature, and nowadays they are recognized over
the world even if they are not natives. Thus, it is said, “Literature in the
United States today is likewise dazzlingly diverse, exciting, and evolving” (p. 136).
I found out several new things that I did not know. For example, I did
not know that postmodernism was another important period for the American
literature, and that as the other periods that we have studied, it also has
important and significative figures that were a key for the genres and styles
that were created during this period due to in that time appeared new and great
genres or styles such as: creative nonfiction, short stories, and dramas. In
every genre, there were different and successful writers such as: the Irish
American Frank McCourt who wrote Angela's Ashes (1996) in
which he recalls his childhood of poverty, family alcoholism, and intolerance
in Ireland with a surprising warmth and humor (VanSpanckeren, 2001, p. 138). Raymond Carver who absorbed John Gardner's
passion, rose above alcoholism and harsh poverty to become the most influential
story writer in the United States. Some of his works are: Will You
Please Be Quiet, Please? (l976), What We Talk About When We
Talk About Love (l981), Cathedral (l983), and Where
I'm Calling From (l988) (p.138). And also, the younger dramatist
Suzan-Lori Parks, an African-American writer that build on the successes of
earlier women. She deals with political issues in experimental works, and her
best known work is The American Play (1991) (p. 140). As these figures, there
were several writers that not only contributed to the American literature but
also made it flourished with their works by empowering every genre or style.
Now, I know that not only there were figures that contributed with the
genres and styles but also that there were writers who set in specific parts or
regions of the USA in order to develop a literary life as they were inspired by
some region. Those regions were classified as: the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic,
the south, the Midwest, among other regions of the USA. In these regions settled
a lot of important figures of the American literature and among those figures
is Don DeLillo who set in the Mid-Atlantic. This region is dominated by New
York City. He set up in this region because he began as an advertising writer,
and his novels explored consumerism among their many themes, and this place was
perfectly for him due to that city “is the home of the publishing industry, as
well as prestigious art galleries and museums” (VanSpanckeren, 2001, p. 141). Don DeLillo is a very important figure of the
American literature because of his works had a big impact in literature’s
development due to his works are so impressive. For example, his most popular
success is Libra (1988), which is “a novel
about John F. Kennedy assassination that indiscriminately mixes fact with wild
conspiracy speculation, brought widespread attention to a writer who had already
won a devoted readership for eight previous novels” (Perkins and Perkins, 2002,
p.2011). Don DeLillo wrote more works like: his first novel Americana (1971), White Noise (1958), among others.
However, his work Libra is a
great piece of writing that enriched the American literary tradition.
I would like to know if those regions in which American writers set up are
still divided in the same way as it used to be in the contemporary period.
