A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing) - Softcover

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9781933354026: A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 193335402X ISBN 13: 9781933354026

Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd., 2006

This is a people’s history’ with tongue in cheek, delightfully funny, imaginative, but with a subtle undertone of seriousness. I enjoyed it immensely.”
--HOWARD ZINN, author of A People’s History of the United States

Original stories & artwork by:
Daniel Alarcon, Amy Bloom, Kate Bornstein, Alexander Chee, T Cooper, Keith Knight, Ron Kovic, Paul La Farge, Felicia Luna Lemus, Adam Mansbach, Valerie Miner, Tommy O’Malley, Neal Pollack, David Rees, Sarah Schulman, Darin Strauss, and Benjamin Weissman.

History is distorted the moment it's recorded--and in these politically dishonest times, challenging the stories we're told is more important than ever. In this groundbreaking anthology of original fiction, a diverse group of America's best writers takes on the task of creating counter-narratives to mainstream American history. Here are some of the moments and the people left out of the textbooks. Here is what else happened--on the margins of American life, and in between the lines of our history books.

A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing brings together an eclectic array of celebrated authors and cartoonists to create a patchwork, anecdotal history of this complicated country. From the Chinese discovery of America in 1426 to the new McCarthyism of a post-9-11 world, this collection recasts everything from the moon landing to the Lindbergh kidnapping, westward expansion to the sexual proclivities of Civil War officers. Riveting, inventive, and politically vital, this anthology picks up--and yanks on--America's supposed commitment to seeking the truth . . . even if that truth is revealed in fiction.

T Cooper is the author of the novels Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes (Dutton) and Some of the Parts (Akashic). T lives in New York City.

Adam Mansbach is the author of the novels Angry Black White Boy (Crown), Shackling Water (Doubleday), and the forthcoming The End of the Jews (Spiegel & Grau/Doubleday). He lives in Berkeley, California

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About the Author:

T Cooper's debut novel Some of the Parts, was a B&N Discover Program selection and a Quality Paperback Book Club pick. Her work has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, the Believer, and The Future Dictionary of America (McSweeney?s Books). Her second novel, Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes is forthcoming from Penguin/Plume. T lives in New York City. Adam Mansbach is the author of the novels Angry Black White Boy (Crown, 2005) and Shackling Water (Doubleday). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Brooklyn Noir (Akashic 2004), The Best Music Writing 2004 (DaCapo), and elsewhere.

From Publishers Weekly:

This hit-or-miss collection includes new stories by a smattering of seventeen randomly linked writers, some better known (Amy Bloom, Neal Pollack, Darin Strauss) than others (David Rees, Benjamin Weissman, Felicia Luna Lemus). Each tries tackling a moment in American history, be it seemingly miniscule (the 1971 basketball game the Harlem Globetrotters lost, rendered as a charming comic strip by cartoonist and rapper Keith Knight) or generation-defining (veteran Ron Kovic skewering the Vietnam War in "The Recruiters," a pedantic polemic about what happens when soldiers visit a high school). Other topics include the Russian Revolution in America, the Woolworth strikers and the lunar landing. Cooper's and Mansbach's thesis is noble and intellectually rigorous: that "the hegemonic single-narrative of mainstream American history" is essentially fiction in itself. But only Paul LaFarge's delightful McSweeney's-esque story, "The Discovery of America," which provides eleven possible ways the United States came to be founded, really grapples with that issue. Otherwise, we get several pieces about individuals facing the terrors of conservatism or struggling with the immigrant experience. What emerges is a mixed bag of literary ambition that sometimes smells suspiciously of rejected submissions to the New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs department.
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