Teaching Post-1945 American Short Fiction

New frontiers in American fiction

After 1945, women, people of color, and queer writers remade American short fiction, rejecting the modernist dogmas of impersonality and universalism that had long excluded their perspectives from mainstream literature. Since then, authors have continued to investigate identity and align their work with the concerns of their communities. This volume offers instructors ways to explore these revolutionary developments and their societal contexts with students.

Essays on works by writers such as Octavia E. Butler, Louise Erdrich, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Jamaica Kincaid, Toshio Mori, Toni Morrison, Flannery O'Connor, and Philip Roth offer gateways to teaching science fiction, climate fiction, the workshop story, the novel of stories, speculative fiction, and flash fiction. Using approaches as varied as intersectionality, queer theory, and Indigenous pedagogies, essays highlight developments in the styles, genres, and purposes of American short fiction since 1945.

This volume contains discussion of Octavia E. Butler, "Speech Sounds"; Nino Cipri, "The Shape of My Name"; Louise Erdrich, "The Shawl"; Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Sabrina and Corina: Stories; William Faulkner, The Unvanquished and Go Down, Moses; Rebecca Goldstein, "The Legacy of Raizel Kaidish"; Jamaica Kincaid, "Girl"; Toshio Mori, Yokohama, California; Toni Morrison, "Recitatif"; Flannery O'Connor, "Everything That Rises Must Converge"; Philip Roth, "The Conversion of the Jews"; Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Gimpel the Fool"; Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge; Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost."