Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Often referred to as the Contemporary Period, the end of the Second World War until the present day represents the span of our last period of literature. Why it is difficult to come up with a list of qualities that accurately describe the Contemporary Period of American Literature may be because the population has grown so large, or because printing and computer desktop publishing is so common, the situation is more chaotic than ever before. Perhaps, however, we will be known as a choppy period in which society has been broken into groups and fractions based on things like: race, religion, culture, gender, age, and sexual orientation. People tend to cling to their own group and our sense of national unity is weakening. However, it may also be possible that such social movements as multi-culturalism are forging a New America. In literature, especially, most schools no longer emphasize the traditional canon of works and authors, but are instead teaching the literature of a wide variety of cultures. There are works by Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and so on. In the years after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, a dizzying prosperity spread through the United States, whi