Visions of belonging
Subtitle: family stories, popular culture, and postwar democracy, 1940-1960
By: Judith E. Smith.
Series: Popular cultures, everyday lives
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 444
Subjects: Popular culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Arts, American -- 20th century; Family -- United States -- History -- 20th century; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1918-1945; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1945-1970
Description: "Visions of Belonging explores how beloved and still-remembered family stories - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I Remember Mama, Gentleman's Agreement, Death of a Salesman, Marty, and A Raisin in the Sun - entered the popular imagination and shaped collective dreams in the postwar years and into the 1950s. These stories helped define widely shared conceptions of who counted as representative Americans and who could be recognized as belonging." "The book listens in as white and black authors and directors, readers and viewers reveal divergent, emotionally textured, and politically charged social visions. Their diverse perspectives provide a point of entry into an extraordinary time when the possibilities for social transformation seemed boundless. But changes were also fiercely contested, especially as the war's culture of unity receded in the resurgence of cold war anticommunism and demands for racial equality were met with intensifying white resistance. Judith E. Smith traces the cultural trajectory of these family stories as they circulated widely in bestselling paperbacks, hit movies, and popular drama on stage, radio, and television."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [329]-424) and index.