Decentralization and multiculturalism. The rise of multiethnic fiction.

The Border Trilogy

Blood Meridian

This 1985 novel of historical fiction marked a shift in the setting of his books to the southwest. His works are often divided into the "Appalachian Period" and the "Southwestern Period". This work is polarizing: it is certainly his most violent work, but it's also a work of tremendous depth and precision. It traces the life of a boy named only "the kid", who in 1851 finds himself riding with "The Glanton Gang", a vicious gang of outlaws who are being paid by the Mexican government to bring back Indian scalps. The book unflinchingly depicts horrific acts of violence committed by Americans, Indians and Mexicans alike. Despite the graphic depictions of violence the outlaws commit against nearly anyone they encounter in their journey across a long swath of the West, the novel is written in a language that is not only exact but florid and dense, using a vocabulary heavily borrowed from Spanish and a diction that seems at turns archaic and lyrical. In a 2006 New York Times poll asking many noted writers and critics what they thought were the most important works in American fiction in the last 25 years, Blood Meridian ranked #3 (behind only Toni Morrison's Beloved and Don DeLillo's Underworld).

Despite several awards and a number of positive reviews, McCarthy was not widely read until the publication of his sixth novel, All the Pretty Horses (1992). The book, the first part of what McCarthy calls "The Border Trilogy," spent some time on bestseller lists and won the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. It was later made into a film. The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998) rounded out the trilogy. In the 2006 New York Times Book Survey mentioned above, "The Border Trilogy" collectively ranked as the fifth most important work of American fiction in the last twenty-five years.

Decentralization is the process of dispersing decision-making closer to the point of service or action. The more decentralized a system is, the more it relies on lateral relationships, and the less it can rely on command or force.

Multiculturalism is a philosophy that is sometimes construed as ideology advocating that modern society should at least embrace and include distinct cultural groups with equal cultural and political status. It is the creative interchange of numerous ethnic and racial subcultures. Multiculturalism is a term often used to describe the cultural and ethnic diversity of a nation and advocates of it often argue that diversity is a positive force for a society’s nationhood or cultural identity. Multiculturalism contrasts with monoculturalism and assimilation which had been the norm in the nation-state paradigm since the early nineteenth century. (Monoculturalism implies a normative cultural unity, 'monocultural' can be a descriptive term for pre-existing homogeneity). Assimilation implies the need for groups that fall out of the homogeneous norm to fully embrace and accept the dominant cultural paradigm as their own without concurrent adjustments from the dominant group.

In the United States, continuous mass immigration had been a feature of economy and society since the first half of the 19th century. There was no fiction that the immigrants would return: immigration was seen as a permanent choice for a new country. The absorption of the stream of immigrants became, in itself, a prominent feature of the national mythos, along with the expansion westwards. The central metaphor is the idea of the Melting Pot - where all the immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated without state intervention. The Melting Pot implied that each individual immigrant, and each group of immigrants, assimilated into American society at their own pace, improving their income and social status on the way. It reflected and influenced official policy: although language courses were offered, they were rarely compulsory. As a result, several immigrant communities maintained a non-English language for generations. The nature of American national identity, with its emphasis on symbolic patriotism, allegiance, national values and a national mythos, facilitated the assimilation of immigrants. The Melting Pot attitude did not require a detailed knowledge of American history, acquisition of a complex cultural heritage, or English with an American accent. It allowed interest in the culture of the country of origin, and family ties with that country. In practice, the original culture disappeared within two generations. An Americanized (and often stereotypical) version of the original nation's cuisine, and its holidays, survived.

A pervasive regionalist sensibility has gained strength in American literature in the past two decades. Decentralization expresses the postmodern U.S. condition, a trend most evident in fiction writing; no longer does any one viewpoint or code successfully express the nation. No one city defines artistic movements, as New York City once did. Vital arts communities have arisen in many cities, and electronic technology has de-centered literary life.

As economic shifts and social change redefine America, a yearning for tradition has set in. The most sustaining and distinctively American myths partake of the land, and writers are turning to the Civil War South, the Wild West of the rancher, the rooted life of the midwestern farmer, the southwestern tribal homeland, and other localized realms where the real and the mythic mingle. Of course, more than one region has inspired many writers; they are included here in regions formative to their vision or characteristic of their mature work.

Today, African American literature has become accepted as an integral part of American literature, with books in the genre, such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley and The Color Purple by Alice Walker, achieving both best-selling and award-winning status. In addition, African American authors such as Toni Morrison are ranked among the top writers in the United States.

The United States has had a community and tradition of writing by Jewish immigrants and their descendants for a long time, although many writers have objected to being reduced to "Jewish" writers alone. Key modern writers with Jewish origins are Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Potok, Isaac Asimov, Wendy Wasserstein, and Woody Allen,among others.

Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ) uses colloquial language and traditional stories to fashion haunting, lyrical poems such as In Cold Storm Light. Amy Tan (1952- ), of Chinese descent, has described her parents' early struggles in California in The Joy Luck Club. Oscar Hijuelos (1951- ), a writer with roots in Cuba, won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Bharati Mukherjee (1940-) is an award-winning Indian born American writer. She is currently a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley.