Drawing on critical frameworks, this study establishes the centrality of language, gender, and community in the quest for identity in contemporary American fiction. Close readings of novels by Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, Ann Beattie, John Updike, Chang-rae Lee, and Rudolfo Anaya, among others, show how individuals find their American identities.

'Hurst's greatest contribution is the bridging of linguistic and literary perspectives in the study of language, gender and community. She effectively uses both approaches and renders a unique analysis that benefits not only readers interested in linguistics and literature but also those curious about new ways of studying gender and language. This makes the book interesting, useful and accessible to undergraduate, graduate and other scholarly communities interested in gender, language and literature.' Gender and Language

Autorentext
MARY JANE HURST is a Professor of English at Texas Tech University, USA, and the author of The Voice of the Child in American Literature: Linguistic Approaches to Fictional Child Language.

Inhalt
Finding One's Place by Finding One's Voice in Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying and Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy Language and Gender in the Academic Communities of Ann Beattie's Another You and John Updike's Memories of the Ford Administration Balancing Self and Other through Speech and Silence in Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses Love, Destruction, and Wounded Hearts in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris Contours of the Future in Denise Chávez's Face of an Angel and Rudolfo Anaya's Alburquerque Twenty-First Century Reflections on American Voices and American Identities