The Gift of Story

Preface

Introduction

Section 1: The Postmodern Condition

1. Inventing Hope: The Question of Belief in Don DeLillo's Novels, Mark Eaton

2. Voices from Within: Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, and Roberta Bondi, Anne-Marie Bowery

3. Time for Hope: The Sixth Sense, American Beauty, Memento, and Twelve Monkeys, D. Brent Laytham

4. Beyond Futility: American Beauty and the Book of Ecclesiastes, Robert K. Johnston

Section 2: The Valley of Despair

5. Prosaic Grace: Doris Betts's Souls Raised from the Dead, Martha Greene Eads

6. Narrative Bones: Amy Tan's Bonesetter's Daughter and Hugh Cook's Homecoming Man, Elaine Lux

7. Hope from a Radio: Jurek Becker's Jakob the Liar , Eric Sterling

8. Friendship and Hope: Elie Wiesel's The Town Beyond the Wall, Carole J. Lambert

Section 3: Resisting the Night

9. A Passion for the Impossible: Richard Rorty, John Okada, and James Baldwin, Harold K. Bush, Jr.

10. The Prophetic Burden: James Baldwin as a Latter-Day Jeremiah, Kelvin Beliele

11. Reconciliation and Hope: Confessional Narratives in South Africa, Susan Van Zanten Gallagher

Section 4: Adversity and Grace

12. Hope in Hard Times: Moments of Epiphany in Illness Narratives, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

13. Geographies of Hope: Kathleen Norris and David Lynch, Kevin L. Cole

14. Attunement and Healing: The Fisher King, Michael B. Herzog

15. The Gift of Grace: Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast, Maire Mullins

Section 5: Hope and the Imagination

16. The Redress of Imagination: Bernard MacLaverty's Grace Notes, Barry Sloan

17. The Search for "Deeper Magic": J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis, Emily Griesinger

18. J. R. R. Tolkien: Postmodern Visionary of Hope, Ralph C. Wood

Works Cited

List of Contributors