Ernest Hemingway revolutionized the American short story, establishing himself as a master of realist fiction in the tradition of Guy de Mauppasant. Yet none of Hemingway's emulators has succeeded in duplicating his understated, minimalist style. In his Iceberg Theory of fiction, only the tip of the story is seen on the surface--the rest is submerged out of sight. This study surveys the scope of Hemingway's mastery of the short story form, enabling a fuller understanding of such works as "Indian Camp," "Big Two-Hearted River," "The Killers," "The Mother of a Queen," "In Another Country," "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," and "The Mercenaries," among many others.

Born in rural Mississippi, the grandson of slaves, Richard Wright overcame every social obstacle, including poverty, racism, and limited education to achieve literary recognition as the creator of some of America's most powerful Black literature. Wright's works changed the cultural landscape by challenging old stereotypes and myths about race. Wright scholar Robert Felgar has written a critical volume to help students appreciate the literary significance of such groundbreaking works as Native Son and the autobiographical Black Boy. This study serves students of both literature and social history as it explores the themes of racism and all types of insitutionalized oppression that Wright exposed in his provocative writing. Felgar approaches each of Wright's major works in chronological order, offering insightful literary analysis of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, and The Outsider, as well as Wright's two works published posthumously, Eight Men, a collection of stories, and Lawd Today! This Student Companion introduces readers to Richard Wright with a biographical chapter, recounting the writer's struggles and achievements. A literary heritage chapter examines the genres, themes, and stylistic traditions that figured in Wright's work. Each of Wright's major works of fiction is given careful literary interpretation, with analysis of plot, character development, thematic concerns and a close alternate reading.

Understanding Alice Walker serves both as an introduction to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner's large body of work and as a critical analysis of her multifaceted canon. Thadious M. Davis begins with Walker's biography and her formative experiences in the South and then presents ways of accessing and reading Walker's complex, interconnected, and sociopolitically invested career in writing fiction, poetry, critical essays, and meditations. Although best known for her novel The Color Purple and her landmark essays In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Walker began her career with Once: Poems, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. She has remained committed not merely to writing in multiple genres but also to conveying narratives of the hope and transformation possible within the human condition and as visualized through the lens of race and gender. Davis traces Walker's literary voice as it emerges from the civil rights and feminist movements to encourage an individual and collective search for justice and joy and then evolves into forceful advocacy for world peace, spiritual liberation, and environmental conservancy.