Themes in Literature/Isolation and Community

 In loving memory of Veronica A. Cover • For Contributors • For Readers • Volume I: Isolation and Community • Volume II: Belonging and Exile • Volume III: Xenophobia and Xenophilia • Contributors • Print version of introductory material

I’m alone in a crowd—e pluribus plures. Far from a family I miss. I’d almost say I’m lonely, but lonely Is worse, I recall, than this. --Geoffrey Brock, Bryant Park at Dusk

 Preface 

About the authors whose works are discussed in this volume

 Short fiction 
 * Ray Bradbury, "Night Call, Collect"


 * Anton Chekov, "The Bet"


 * Julio Cortázar, "The Southern Thruway"


 * Ken Liu, "The Paper Menagerie"


 * Carmen Maria Machado, "Dream House as Choose your Own Adventure"


 * Oscar Wilde,
 * "The Happy Prince"
 * "The Selfish Giant"

 Long Fiction 
 * Octavia E. Butler,
 * Dawn
 * Kindred

 Poetry 
 * Emily Dickinson,
 * "Much Madness is divinest Sense"
 * "They shut me up in Prose"
 * "The Soul selects her own Society"


 * Langston Hughes,
 * "Let America Be America Again"
 * "Mother to Son"

 Short film 
 * Pierre Ieong, Belonging

Textual Comparison
 * "The Deluded Self": Machado's "Dream House as Choose your Own Adventure" and Sartre's No Exit