In Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck's beautifully rendered depictions of small yet fateful moments that transform ordinary lives, these twelve early stories introduce both the subject and style of artistic expression that recur in the most important works of his career. Each of these self-contained stories is linked to the others by the presence of the Munroes, a family whose misguided behavior and lack of sensitivity precipitate disasters and tragedies. As the individual dramas unfold, Steinbeck reveals the self-deceptions, intellectual limitations, and emotional vulnerabilities that shape...

James Nagel offers the first systematic history and definition of the short story cycle genre as exemplified in contemporary American fiction, bringing attention to the format's wide appeal among various ethnic groups. He examines in detail eight recent manifestations of the story cycle, all praised by critics while uniformly misidentified as novels: Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich; Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid; Monkeys, by Susan Minot; The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros; The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien; How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez; The Joy...

Race and Culture in New Orleans Stories posits that the Crescent City and the surrounding Louisiana bayous were a logical setting for the literary exploration of crucial social problems in America.

Race and Culture in New Orleans Stories is a study of four volumes of interrelated short stories set in New Orleans and the surrounding Louisiana bayous: Kate Chopin s Bayou Folk; George Washington Cable s Old Creole Days; Grace King s Balcony Stories; and Alice Dunbar-Nelson s The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories. James Nagel argues...