CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

CHARACTERISTICS

• Uses metafictional techniques
• Emphasizes and exploits the nature of our identities
• Questions our understanding of culture
• Questions omniscience
• Questions breaks and or emphasizes older social boundaries

CHARACTERISTICS

• Shows struggles of humanity and its people
• Exploits and questions war
• Uses and questions old cultural boundaries

CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS

• John Steinbeck: Nobel Prize winner
• Toni Morrison: Nobel prize winner
• Amy Tan: Common Weath Award
• Joseph Heller
• William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Winner

CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS

• Alice Walker: Pulitzer Prize
• Richard Wilbur: Unites States Poet Laureate
• Raymond Carver
• J.D. Salinger
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Nobel Prize winner

CONTEMPORARY WORKS

• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 1960
• Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty 1985
• Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 1961
• The Things They Carried - Tim 'Obrien
• The World According to Garp

CONTEMPORARY WORKS

• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1967
• The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger 1951
• Night Again - Linh Dinh 1996
• The Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers 2012
• The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan 1989