Browse by Subject: American

Please note that while you may order forthcoming books at any time, they will not be available for shipment until shortly before publication date

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B is for Baldwin: An Alphabet Tour of the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature

The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, part of Special and Area Studies in the Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of children’s books in the world. This lushly illustrated volume offers a glimpse into rarities and wonders of the Baldwin.

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The Gulf South: An Anthology of Environmental Writing

Reaching from Texas to Florida and featuring a diverse array of voices from the past 100 years, this collection of environmental writing about the Gulf South region enriches how we understand the relationship between people and the rapidly changing ecology of the Gulf.

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Sacraments of Memory: Catholicism and Slavery in Contemporary African American Literature

Sacraments of Memory is the first book to focus on Catholic themes and imagery in African American literature. Erin Michael Salius discovers striking elements of the religion in neo-slave narratives written by Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, Charles R. Johnson, and Edward P. Jones.

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Furiously Funny: Comic Rage from Ralph Ellison to Chris Rock

A combustible mix of fury and radicalism, pathos and pain, wit and love--Terrence Tucker calls it "comic rage," and he shows how it has been used by African American artists to aggressively critique America's racial divide.

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Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings

Beginning with Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and continuing into contemporary black women's writings, Donna Weir-Soley emphasizes the importance of sexuality in the development of black female subjectivity. Analyzing the works and characters of such writers as Toni Morrison, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Edwidge Danticat, she reveals how these writers highlight the interplay between the spiritual and the sexual through religious symbols found in Voudoun, Santeria, Condomble, Kumina, and Hoodoo.

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Hemingway and Italy: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives

From his World War I service in Italy through his transformational return visits during the decades that followed, Ernest Hemingway's Italian experiences were fundamental to his artistic development. Hemingway and Italy offers essays from top scholars, exciting new voices, and people who knew Hemingway during his Italian days, examining how his adopted homeland shaped his writing and his legacy.

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This Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton

Long overshadowed by fellow confessional poets Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton seldom features in literary criticism, despite being one of America’s most influential women writers. Now in this much-needed volume Sexton and her poetry are reassessed for the first time in two decades.

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Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism shows that Wharton was highly engaged with global issues of her time, due in part to her extensive travel abroad. Examining both her canonical and lesser-known works and including her art historical discoveries, her political writings, and her travel writing, the essays in this volume explore Wharton's diverse, complex, and sometimes problematic relationship to a cosmopolitan vision.

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Key West Hemingway: A Reassessment

Conventional wisdom holds that Hemingway's Key West years were among his least productive, and many are dismissive of the works he produced during that time. In this collection, several leading Hemingway scholars focus on his overlooked short stories and essays, especially those written for Esquire from 1933 to 1936. They demonstrate how the island inspired some of his most vivid work and discuss how the "Hemingway industry" continues to endure.

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Documenting the Undocumented: Latino/a Narratives and Social Justice in the Era of Operation Gatekeeper

Looking at the work of Junot Díaz, Cristina García, Julia Alvarez, and other Latino/a authors who are U.S. citizens, Marta Caminero-Santangelo examines how writers are increasingly expressing their solidarity with undocumented immigrants.