American Literature in the Era of Trumpism

This edited collection offers an exploration of American literature in the age of Trumpismunderstood as an ongoing sociopolitical and affective realityby bringing together analyses of some of the ways in which American writers have responded to the derealization of political culture in the United States and the experience of a new American reality after 2016. The volumes premise is that the disruptions and dislocations that were so exacerbated by the political ascendancy of Trump and his spectacle-laden presidency have unsettled core assumptions about American reality and the possibilities of representation. The blurring of the relationship between fact and fiction, bolstered by the discourses of fake news and alternative facts, has not only drawn attention to the shattering of any notion of shared reality, but has also forced a reexamination of the purpose and value of literature, especially when considering its troubled relation to the representation of America. The authors in this collection respond to the invitation to reassess the workings of fiction and critique in an age of Trumpism by considering some of the most recent literary responses to the (new) American realit(ies)including works by Colson Whitehead, Ben Winters, Claudia Rankine, Gary Shteyngart, Jennifer Egan, and Steve Erickson, to name but a few, some of which were composed in the run-up to the 2016 election but were able to accurately and incisively imagine the world to come.