The authors of the 2nd half of the 20th century followed in the tradition developed by their predecessors. More movements appeared (the Beat Generation, Hippies), ethnic writers (African-American, Asian, Native American, Jewish) became more involved and some of the authors may be called “post-modernist”. New topics became popular (the revolt against the system, ethnic and racial issues, the holocaust), new genres flourished (comic books, fantasy novels, sci-fi, horror stories). American drama was going through its best times.
J.D. SALINGER (1919–2010) wrote The Catcher in the Rye (1951), a short novel about a young man leaving his university studies, disgusted with people around him.
African-American literature became more prominent as the struggle for human rights intensified. They followed the so called Harlem Renaissance, a movement of black writers (e.g. the poet Langston Hughes) from the 1920s.
JAMES BALDWIN (1924–87) was an essayist and novelist writing not only about black people’s problems, but also about homosexuals’ problems.
TONI MORRISON (1931) is famous for her novel The Bluest Eye (1970) about a black girl who is raped by her father and becomes pregnant with him. The book criticises black girls’ pursuit of the ideal of beauty embodied by white girls
WILLIAM STYRON (1925–2006) was a southern writer who is best known for Sophie’s Choice (1979). It is the story of a young Southerner Stingo who befriends a Polish immigrant Sophie and her paranoid lover Nathan. Sophie tells him her story of having to choose between sacrificing one or the other child in a concentration camp during World Warm II.
NORMAN MAILER (1923–2007) is best known for his novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which takes place during WWII in the Pacific.
JOSEPH HELLER (1923–99) wrote Catch-22, a war novel taking place in the Mediterranean. A group of pilots is added new and new flights to their schedule instead of being laid off.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1914–83) wrote psychological plays. He is the author of A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or A Streetcar Named Desire. The latter is the tragedy of a woman raped by her brother-in-law. It is one of the most quoted American plays ever written.
ARTHUR MILLER (1915–2005) wrote Death of a Salesman, the tragedy of a disappointed ageing man who commits suicide to ensure his family money from his life insurance.