How do we tell the story of the United States of America? Why have we always been so connected to and drawn to their literature? Enrico Rotelli meets more than twenty of the most talented American authors, from Maaza Mengiste to Jeffrey Eugenides, from Yiyun Li to Michael Chabon, not forgetting generational landmarks such as Erica Jong and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Pulitzer Prize winners, poets laureates, and new voices all confront from different points of view the hopes, woes, struggles, and hypocrisies that writing is called upon to capture and recount.
A choral book that explores some of the themes, places and questions of this land of immigrants that we think we know, and instead is being rewritten every day with new and different narratives and voices. A sign of devotion to the literature of this overseas land, which now has a history of more than two hundred years but is driven relentlessly into the future, recalling what Cesare Pavese wrote in the preface to his translation of Moby Dick: "To have a tradition is less than nothing, it is only by seeking it that one can live it."