American Literary in the World an anthology from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler by Wai Chee Dimock with Jordan Brower, Edgar Garcia, Kyle Hutzler, and Nicholas Rinehart, EDS

It is a wonderful book American Literary in the World an anthology from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler by Wai Chee Dimock with Jordan Brower, Edgar Garcia, Kyle Hutzler, and Nicholas Rinehart, EDS.

I was immediately attracted by this anthology published by Columbia Press, because I confess: I don't know, being italian, all American writers and literature of course and I was intrigued at first because of it. Plus the original structure interested me a lot. It sounded like a different anthology from the most common ones.
I was right.

The originality of this anthology is this one: the author and the staff decided to create miscellaneous of pieces, poems, extracts of books, from beloved writers and poets speaking at the heart of people through important thematic as war, food (where you see there are also some recipes) work play and travel; religions, and human and non human interface, including also writers lived in 1600s as Bradstreet did.

Doing it, and mixing all together the various authors not just temporally, the author permitted them of  speaking through their words with more energy, intriguing the reader from the beginning to the end.

Of course  writers, poets have specific histories; they said what they said because inspired and influenced by the moment in which they lived in of course; trips in Europe; people who made the difference in their existence as in the case of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ( I didn't know of his speech to Harvard and the fact that the university banned him for 30 years because of his religious ideas too originals.)
Each thematic is anticipated with an introduction, then to follow a short but very good biography of the poet or writer taken in consideration and an extract of his work. In  Allen Ginsberg's biography mentioned also his close friendship with Johnny Depp.

I  appreciated the passage chosen in the section Work, Play, Travel of The East of Eden by John Steinbeck, absolutely the book I love the most of his production. I read it two times.
But...You will find Gertrude Stein, Melville more or less is, in most of sections; and then Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jack Kerouac, just for naming few of them.

This anthology to my point of view is good for many reasons: for re-discovering an author, for discovering authors you didn't know, for create a list of winter-books that you want to read, thematically; for being inspired for your new reading of classics; for re-discovering classics; it is pretty inspirational for the most vital purposes.
For whatever reason you will buy this book, goes for it with the certainty of having close to you an incredible good tool for the most diversified reasons.

And mostly: plenty of life, vibrant, these writers thanks to beautiful passages chosen by the authors will enchant you with their timeless words.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori