Left in the West

Gioia Woods and her contributors bring together histories, biographies, close readings, and theories about the literary and cultural left in the American West. Left in the West expands our understanding of what constitutes the literary left in the United States by including writers, artists, and movements not typically considered within the traditional context of the literary left. In doing so, it provides a new understanding of the region’s place among global and political ideologies.

From the early nineteenth century to the present, a complex and varied body of literary and cultural production has emerged out of progressive social movements. While the literary left in the West shared many interests with other regional expressions—labor, class, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism, the influence of Manifest Destiny—the distinct history of settler colonialism in western territories caused western leftists to develop concerns unique to the region.

Chapters in this volume cover artists and movements from suffragist writers to bohemian Californian photographers, civil rights activists to popular folk musicians, and Latinx memoirists to Native American experimental writers.

The unique consideration of the West as a sociopolitical region establishes a framework for political critique that moves beyond class consequences, anti-fascism, and civil liberties, and into distinct western concerns such as Native American sovereignty, environmental exploitation, and the legacies of settler colonialism.