Title: A General Study on the Identity of the Middle-class White Males in American Suburban Novels

Abstract: The criticism of American literature, having experienced such big “turns” as the “linguistic turn”, “cultural turn”, “ethical turn” and “spatial turn”, witnesses its research on the American Suburban Novels. Three books published in the 21st century concentrate their studies on the identity of the middle-class white males and the trajectory of their identity change. First, the white males’ identity crisis is characterized by the spiritual and cultural poverty. Then, the white males in the complicated social and historical environment ponder how to get out of the crisis. Last, the white males try to get rid of their identity crisis and reconstruct their identity through sharing the living space with the strangers. These three phases constitute a causal and progressive relationship, and construct a panoramic picture for the study of the American middle-class white identity in the American suburban novels. The three books mentioned above provide indispensable literature resources and food for thought for readers to conduct systematic research in this field.

Keywords: American suburban novels, middle-class white males in suburban America, cultural identity, race, gender

Authors: Wenping Gan, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Ke Lu, School of Foreign Languages, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.