ABSTRACT
The United States emerged from World War II in a position of great strength. The early Cold War years in the United States were characterized by contradictions between apparent stability, economic prosperity, and assertions of international authority and the shadow of constant danger and imminent annihilation. The African American Civil Rights and women's liberation movements were the most prominent and widespread. Feminist scholars from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds were an important part of this movement, and the shape of the American literary canon began to change as they fought to recover long-lost or ignored women writers from across American history. Asian American, Native American, and Chicano literary movements took inspiration from the Black Arts movement, making concerted attempts to assert literatures that were culturally distinct but still merited a place in the larger field of American literature, and throughout these movements, women writers sought new ways to represent their own roles and experiences as equally valid.
