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Redefining America

Porter Gifford/Getty Images

New York City firefighters walk through the rubble at the World Trade Center, the ruins of the
Twin Towers behind them.
How does this photograph capture the scale of the tragedy and characterize
Americans’ response to it?

In her 2019 book This America, historian Jill Lepore quotes Frederick Douglass’s
understanding of this nation: “A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing
the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction
from its laws, than nature, reason and the regularly ascertained will of the people;
steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or
family, is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some
narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.” According to Lepore, “These words are
no less true a century and a half later on. . . . [A] nation founded on universal ideas will
never stop fighting over the meaning of its past and the direction of the future. That
doesn’t mean the past or future is meaningless, or directionless, or that anyone can
afford to sit out the fight. The nation, as ever, is the fight.” These words are helpful
as we consider the challenges and changes the nation faces today, including income
inequality, escalating gun violence, changing demographics, political polarization,
globalization, the rise of social media, the proliferation of fake news, the climate crisis,
multiple refugee crises, and more.
And yet, a look at twenty-first-century American literature helps us understand the
beauty and complexity of modern American life from myriad perspectives. Writers and
artists have always told the story of our country, and the poets, novelists, journalists,
critics, artists, and thinkers included in this chapter tell it from a broader perspective
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Copyright © 2021 by Bedford, Freeman & Worth High School Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
Distributed by by Bedford, Freeman & Worth High School Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.

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