Foreword | August 05, 2019
Foreword: Americana
Speer Morgan
Our literature came into a sense of purpose and identity after the Civil War, during the rise of the magazine as a widespread source of American writers. While there was an urgent need to see the United States as a unified nation, there was at the same time—among writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, and Mark Twain–an interest in the variety of America’s culture, history and geography that came to be called the Local Color movement. “Americana” is a plural noun—naturally so, since it celebrates diversity in the histories, dialects, and customs of different areas of the nation.
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