(Ebook) Literary Legacies of the Federal Writers’ Project: Voices of the Depression in the American Postwar Era by Sara Rutkowski (auth.) ISBN 9783319537764, 9783319537771, 3319537768, 3319537776

(Ebook) Literary Legacies of the Federal Writers’ Project: Voices of the Depression in the American Postwar Era by Sara Rutkowski (auth.) ISBN 9783319537764, 9783319537771, 3319537768, 3319537776

The first book-length literary analysis of the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project (FWP)—a massive New Deal program that put thousands to work documenting the country during the Depression. Drawing on critical histories, archival documents, and select works of fiction, the book examines the nature and history of the FWP’s documentary method and its literary imprint, particularly on three key black American writers: Ralph Ellison, Dorothy West, and Margaret Walker. By aiming their documentary lenses so precisely on individual voices, folklore, and cultural communities, FWP writers would ultimately eschew the social realism of thirties culture in favor of themes surrounding personal and cultural identities in the postwar era.This concise volume demonstrates how the FWP served as a repository from which many of the most treasured 20th century writers drew material, techniques, and philosophical direction in ways that would help steer the course of American writing.