This supplement brings together a wide range of articles on American writers, most of them contemporary, although a couple of them reach back to neglected, but important, writers from the literary past. Writers from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds have contributed a great deal to contemporary literature, and several of the strongest among writers of fiction are considered in this volume.
Supplement IX is mostly about contemporary writers, many of whom have received little sustained attention from critics. Some of the important writers from the past have already attracted a good deal of sustained attention, and their work is often taught in college courses, but for various reasons their careers have not yet been discussed in American Writers. It is time they were added to the series. The poets included here are well known in the poetry world, and their work has in each case been honored with major literary prizes.
Skill Wars, Winning the Battle for Productivity and Profit
Skill Wars shows how to increase productivity and profits by making investments in human capital development. It addresses the disparity between the available jobs and available workers. By education and training only 20% of all American workers can fit well into our demanding high-tech workplace. How do we train the 80%?
Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism
This fine interdisciplinary study incorporates the history of the middle class, art, and literature as it historicizes the ways in which white famles participated in, produced, and benefited from Americans' ambivalent fascination with Japan and China and contributed to the feminization of American orientalism during the Gilded Age.
Supplement XVI focuses on contemporary writers of fiction, many of whom have received little sustained attention from critics. We also examine the work of several important writers in the tradition of nonfiction—one of those widely used terms that never seems quite specific enough. A number of classic writers are treated here as well. The critics writing in this collection represent a catholic range of backgrounds and critical approaches, although the baseline for inclusion was that each essay should be accessible to the non-specialist reader or beginning student.
