This anthology of personal essay and autobiography follows the waves of immigration into and migration within the United States from 1900 to the present. Thirty-six writers of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds explore the specific tensions of being American with roots in another culture and also address historical moments which have defined American life during this century―the battle at Wounded Knee, the Second World War, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War, among them. Powerful, first-person accounts, they follow different paths. But each one is driven by the deep need to bear witness and to bring coherence to personal and collective experience. The contributors James Baldwin, Wendell Berry, Carlos Bulosan, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Joan Didion, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Alexander Eastman, Gretel Ehrlich, James Farmer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Gordon, Vivian Gornick, Jessica Hagedon, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Eva Hoffman, June Jordan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Kim Yong Ik, Ron Kovic, Paule Marshall, Pablo Medina, N. Scott Momaday, Bharati Mukherjee, Geoffrey O'Brien, Gregory Orfalea, Sonia Pilcer, Mario Puzo, Jonathan Raban, Adrienne Rich, Richard Rodriguez, Anton Shammas, Monica Stone, Gary Soto, Michael Stephens, Sui Sin Far, and Anzia Yezierska. Visions of America is the nonfiction companion to Imagining Stories from the Promised Land, also edited by Wesley Brown and Amy Ling.
Author
Novelist, playwright, and teacher Wesley Brown was born and raised in Harlem, NYC. His work includes three acclaimed novels (Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, and Push Comes to Shove) and three produced plays (Boogie Woogie and Booker T, Life During Wartime, and A Prophet Among Them). Brown's work often reflects his political involvement. In 1965, Brown worked with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party on voting registration. In 1968, he became a member of the Black Panther Party in Rochester, New York. In 1972, he was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing induction into the armed services and spent eighteen months in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. He is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University, where he taught for 27 years. He currently teaches literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and lives in Spencertown, New York.
