Continental Divides: Revisioning American Literature

The book calls for a new iconography of region that unseats New England's status as cultural center of the United States and originary metaphor for national identity. No single territorial or political axis can adequately describe the complex regional relationships that comprise the nation, Goldman argues. The essays in this volume juxtapose African-American, Mexican-American, and Anglo American fictions produced in the wake of both the Civil War and the U.S.-Mexican War, contiguous nationa...