Themes

• Literary works of the 21st Century are more vocal in expressing ideas about one’s identity.
• Identity: Many of our writings today discuss topics such as women’s rights, LGBT rights, religion, globalization, culture and others.
• Identity: Also, there are coming-of-age stories evident today.
• Examples of Identity Themed Literature

  1. Coming-of-age story entitled Becky Albertalli
  2. LGBT-themed novel entitled Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
• History and Memory: Some writings in the 21st Century tend to look back at history with the purpose of reminding people of what happened in the past.
• History and Memory: In the 21st Century Literature, history and memory offers a perspective more subjective than of in history books.
• An example of History and Memory Themed Literature is "The March" by E.L. Doctorow. It fictionalizes yet still depicts the realities of General Sherman’s famous march during the U.S. Civil War, and how people of the South were slaughtered, giving a slightly different perspective of how the North is usually depicted.
• Technology: Nowadays, works of fictions, poetry, and drama, and even non-literary writings can be easily accessed with just a touch of the fingertips.
• Technology allows readers to be more engaged and make reading more accessible.
• Social media has become an avenue for literary pieces such as Facebook and Twitter, and websites that publish stories.
• Through technology, writers can easily publish their works and receive feedbacks in real time.
• Intertextuality refers to the connection between a piece of literature in the past to the literary piece of today. It uses past literary works as a reference or a background to understand a current piece.
• Interetextuality: Authors tend to copy, imitate, and steal ideas from the past to use it as a reference or inspiration.
• An example of intertextuality is "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz where it references many comics, movies and other books that already existed in order to describe events.