american novelists

A memoir of the author's childhood in the Bronx during World War II, where his father was an air-raid warden and made fur-lined vests for the Navy, and his mother, a Russian immigrant, became a poker dealer to a cicle of powerful Bronx politicians who dealt in the blackmarket.

"From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir on her life as a writer, her childhood, and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory"-- Provided by publisher.

Examines the life of twentieth-century American novelist John Steinbeck, featuring interviews with people who knew and loved the writer, and including discussion of some of his landmark works, and his legacy of literature and activism.

A memoir in which author John Irving recalls the thirteen years he spent adapting his novel "The Cider House Rules" for the screen, provides a history of abortion politics in the U.S., and discusses his efforts to make his other novels into movies.

Jennifer Boylan discusses how she spent the first forty years of life knowing she was a woman trapped in a man's body and explores how her physical, emotional, and spiritual life was changed after a sex-change operation.

Living in the southern United States during the civil rights movement, William Faulkner’s work is fraught with depictions of life in the changing South. Through the interpretation of key details of his life, as well as direct quotations and analysis of his word choice and themes, readers will learn how to examine and comprehend Faulkner’s writing for themselves.

Toni Morrison has received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and many other awards. But in order to fully appreciate what this amazing author has accomplished, students must know where she came from, the era in which she grew up, and how these details influenced the major themes, style, and language of her writing. Through critical analysis, excerpts, and direct quotations from Morrison herself, this text will allow readers to gain a deeper understanding of her work.