Tim O'Brien and the Vietnam experience

Tim O'Brien is an American writer who, drafted to serve in Vietnam, was so deeply affected by the experience that he draws heavily on it in his fiction.

What follows is an outline of the main events in this war that affected so deeply a whole generation of Americans (and which left a terrible mark on the Vietnamese people).

* In 1954, the French were driven out of Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh’s soldiers.
Vietnam was divided into two: Communists ruled the North, and non-Communists the South.

* There should have been elections, which did not take place due to Southern fear that Ho Chi Minh would win.
* Ho Chi Minh set out to unite Vietnam through war.
* Americans intervened as part of their policy to stop the spred of communism worldwide. (Containment policy)
* The Vietnam war was one of ambushes and sudden attacks.

* Ordinary villagers fought the war.
* It was a guerrilla war, difficult for Americans.
* By the early 1960s, it was clear that South Vietnam, suported by the American government, was losing the war.
* Yet, the war would go on for more than a decade. (until 1973-1975)
American fighting men grew angry and frustrated. They burnt towns and sprayed napalm (deadly chemicals) againts the Vietcong soldiers and villages.

* There were peace marchs all over the USA.
* In 1973, during Nixon's presidency, the last American soldier left Vietnam. However, the war would be over only in 1975, when Ho Chi Minh's victorious tanks eneterd the city of Saigon.

As said above, Tim O'Brien relies heavily on his war experience to write much if his fiction. "How to Tell a True War Story" is a good example of this, together with a text with many traits of metafiction.
What is metafiction?
“Metafiction is a self-reflexivity prompted by the author’s awareness of the theory underlying the construction of fictional works.” (Patricia Waugh)

Relation with other arts: There are many movies which depict the Vietnam War from several perspectives. A great -very interesting one- is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now! which turns Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness into a Vietnam War experience.
You may watch the original trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt0xxAMTp8M

William Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha's Chronicler

Ethnic Literatures

The idea of a melting pot in which all cultures mix and melt has long been left aside. Instead, the metaphor of the mosaic is more commonly used to refer to American culture: a country where different cultures coexist, side by side; each contributing to the whole, but keeping at the same time their distinctiveness. This acceptance and respect of diversity has led to the description of America as MULTICULTURAL society. The main ethnic groups that are part of America's multiculturalism are African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. These terms are, of course, quite imprecise, as immigrants from Asia came from different countries, African slaves were brught from several parts of Africa, Hispanics may be of any of many Latin American countries, and Native Americans have very different ancestries, languages, cultures, etc.

                                                                Amy Tan


Louise Erdrich

The Dream Deferred: Lorraine Hansberry and the echoes of Langston Hughes' Poetry

The history of African Americans was marked by deep injustices (starting with slavery, which was abolished in 1865; followed by legal segregation, in practice until 1965; and its various manifestations which attempted against the social and civil rights, and even the identity of a whole people.

Against such a negative background, artists among other members of the African American community played an important role in defining identity in positive termns, fighting for recognition of equal rights, and contributiing to the richness, diversity and multi-voiced character of American multicultural art.

Lorraine Hansberry, a playwright commited to the African American cause, wrote her paly A Raisin in the Sun which was produced in 1959 for the first time. The play takes its title from a poem by Langston Hughes. He was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Below you can read Hughes' text:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

This poem plays with the idea of the dream (the American dream, which has been part of American life, history, ideology and society from the very beginning); only that his series of rhetorical questions turn the "dream" inside-out: what happens when people cannot reach their dream? when it is postponed?

Lorraine Hansberry's play is an attempt to answer the question. The dream may take different forms in each character's case, but they're all unified by the desire of equality.

As you read the play, take into consideration the following ideas:
* The dream(s)
* Asagai's role in helping define dreams and identity
* Realism vs. idealism
* Vanished dreams
* Death (real ans symbolic)
* Role of men. Manhood

And think deeply about the following questions:
* Is Lena a nurturing or an overbearing mother?
* How does the nature of the family account for the dreams they have?
* Which economic, social and moral pressures do the characters feel?