american literature

"Provides information and examples of the various authors, works, and literary movements that make up American literature"--Provided by publisher.

"From essays about the Salem witch trials to literary uses of ghosts by Twain, Wharton, and Bierce to the cinematic blockbuster "The Sixth Sense", this book is the first to survey the importance of ghosts and hauntings in American culture across time. From the Puritans' conviction that a thousand preternatural beings appear every day before our eyes, to today's resurgence of spirits in fiction and film, the culture of the United States has been obsessed with ghosts. this book asserts that ghosts, whether in oral tradition, literature, or such modern forms as cinema have always been constructions embedded in specific historical ontexts and invoked for explicit purposes, often poitical in nature"--Adapted from publisher description.

A collection of early writings by some of today's well-known writers that they have submitted as their worst work, along with the author's commentary about that particular piece of writing. Includes contributions from Dave Eggers, Rick Moody, Gillian Flynn, and many others.

Includes anecdotes, legends and bon mots about famous and infamous American literary figures.

"The Encyclopedia of Black Comics, focuses on people of African descent who have published significant works in the United States or have worked across various aspects of the comics industry. The book focuses on creators in the field of comics: inkers, illustrators, artists, writers, editors, Black comic historians, Black comic convention creators, website creators, archivists and academics--as well as individuals who may not fit into any category but have made notable achievements within and/or across Black comic culture"--Provided by publisher.

A collection of stories, comics, and poems about the power of joy and the wonders of Black boyhood.

"The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, [the author] notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages to date, and growing. The Marvel story is a gigantic mountain, smack in the middle of contemporary culture. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. And not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing--nobody's supposed to. So, of course, that's what [the author] did: he read all 27,000 comics that make up the Marvel universe thus far, from Alpha Flight to Omega the Unknown. And then he made sense of it: seeing into the ever-expanding story, in its parts and as a coherent whole, and seeing through it, as a prism through which to view the landscape of American culture. In [his] hands, the mammoth Marvel narrative becomes a funhouse-mirror history of the past 60 years, from the atomic night-terrors of the Cold War to the technocracy and political division of the present day--a . . . tragicomic . . . epic about power and ethics, set in a world transformed by wonders. As a work of cultural exegesis, this is . . . significant, even a landmark; it's also . . . fun. Looking over close to sixty years of Marvel's comics, [the author] sees . . . patterns -- the rise and fall of particular cultural aspirations, and of the storytelling modes that conveyed them. He observes the Marvel story's progressive visions and its painful stereotypes, its patches of . . . hackwork and stretches of . . . creativity, and the way they all feed into a . . . cosmology that echoes our . . . hopes and fears"--Provided by publisher.

"A collection of Christmas stories [and poems] written by African-American journalists, activists, and writers from the late 19th century through the Depression era"--Provided by publisher.

A collection of writings by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in which he examines African American arts and culture, Africa and the African Diaspora, and other related topics.

A collection forty-nine essays arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers in the 19th-century.