American Odysseys is an anthology of twenty-two novelists, poets, and
short-story writers drawn from the shortlist for the 2011 Vilcek Prize
for Creative Promise in Literature. Including Ethiopian-born Dinaw
Mengestu, the recipient of the Prize; Yugoslavian-born Téa Obreht, the
youngest author to receive the Orange Prize in Fiction; and Chinese-born
Yiyun Li, a MacArthur Genius grantee, what these authors all have in
common--and share with US Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who has
contributed a foreword--is that they are immigrants to the United
States, now excelling in their fields and dictating the terms by which
future American writing will be judged by the world. Running the gamut
from desperate realism to whimsical fantasy--from Miho Nonaka's poetry,
inspired by fourteenth-century Noh theater, to Ismet Prcic's wrenching
stories set in the aftermath of the Bosnian war--American Odysseys is
proof, if any be needed, that the heterogeneity of American society is
its greatest asset.