21ST CENTURY THEMES
Cards (9)
- Identity
- Because of the increasing globalization, there were more intersections of cultures and more vocal discussions of women’s rights and LGBTQIA+ rights
- Search for identity (Coming of age films)
- Life’s meaning and meaninglessness (books on philosophy or books on self-reflection)
- Redefining one’s identity (Memoir)
- Ex: Little Women, Enola Holmes, Heartstopper
- History and Memory (including postcolonial viewpoints)
- NONSTALGIA
- Acknowledges that history is filtered through human perspective and experience
- Ex: GOMBURZA, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Banyaga: A Song of War by Charlson Ong
- Social Evils
- War terrorism
- Racism
- Religious conflicts
- Reflect a frank awareness of societal ills and of man’s capacity for cruelty
- Ex: Some people need killing, The Kite Runner
- Catastrophe
- Natural
- Man-made
- Merits and/or Perils of technology
- Technology is more integrated into people’s lives than ever before
- Many 21st-century works of literature explore what it means when all of humanity’s experiences are filtered through technology
- Ex: Black Mirror, Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Personalization of Narratives
- The prevalent use of personal pronouns
- Stories and narratives now become more personal
- There is no longer an anonymous, omniscient third-person narrator
- RISE OF CREATIVE NONFICTION
- Ex: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
- Fracturing
- Retelling from another angle or story
- Ex: Everyday and Someday by David Levitan, Maleficient and Sleeping Beauty by Disney
- Effects of commercialism
- Root is commerce, which is the buying and the selling of things
- Emphasis on the maximizing of profit
- Practices and attitudes that are concerned with the making of profit at the expense of quantity
- Ex: The Confessions of a Shopaholic
- Diaspora and Migration
- The dispersion of any people from their original homeland
- A way to move from one place to another in order to live and work
- Stories of OFWs, those that migrated