Adolescence, America, and Postwar Fiction

RACHAEL MCLENNAN is holder of a PhD in American Literature, awarded by the University of Glasgow.

• Introduction: 'Can You Feel It Yet?': Notes Towards a Poetics of Adolescence in American Literature Unpacking 'Something Dark': Narrating Southern Female Adolescence in Jill McCorkle's The Cheer Leader and Ferris Beach , Josephine Humphreys's Rich in Love , Sylvia Wilkinson's Bone of My Bones , and Thulani Davis's 1959 The Fly, the Earthworm, the Bottle and the Bell Jar: Female Adolescents as Philosophers and Revolutionaries in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar , Joyce Carol Oates's I'll Take You There , Toni Cade Bambara's 'Sweet Town' and Alice Hoffman's Property Of 'So, to recap': Signifying Adolescence in Danzy Senna's Caucasia and Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex Conclusion: To recap, again Bibliography Index

'Heretofore, the study of literary representations of the coming-of-age process has always been a little like adolescence itself: somewhat confused and without direction. Adolescence, America and Postwar Fiction goes a long way towards breaking past the mythologies of youth by interrogating their metaphorical bases. Theoretically sophisticated and compelling in its close readings, McLennan's book moves our understanding of literary adolescence into its own maturity.' - Professor Kirk Curnutt, Troy State University Montgomery, author of Alienated-Youth Fiction