Synopses & Reviews
Arguing that metaphor and the figurative are central to constructions and narrations of adolescence in America, this book uses a wide array of fictional and critical work, including texts by Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides, to provide original and provocative new readings of adolescence.
About the Author
RACHAEL MCLENNAN is holder of a Ph.D. in American Literature, awarded by the University of Glasgow.
Table of Contents
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