WRITERS AND NATIONALITIES

 In 1997, a reviewer lamented that most of my material in A Dictionary of Proverbs, Spanish and English, was "British." I had compiled that dictionary with the English language in mind, not considering nationalities. Proverbs in the English language do not carry passports.

Why this? It has been brought to my attention (Vicky Ascorve Harper) that Mr. Sean Griffiths mentioned in The Sunday Times, 22 May, 2014, that Mr. Micael Gove, education secretary, has decided to drop American writers from the new English list of GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). He wishes British students to read British writers.

Writers do have nationalities, but their main allegiance is to language, regardless of place of birth. Naipaul, Patrick White, Alice Munro, Tagore, Yeats, G. Bernard Shaw, and Hemingway were born in Jamaica, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Yet we all read those Nobel Prize winners in English. They have enriched the language and given it the importance and shine it now has. 

It is a mistake to ban writers because of their nationalities.

In my time, I read some American writers who, in my teens, made a deep impression on me. Look them up and read one of their works.


John Steinbeck, J.D. Sallinger, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neal, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Erskine Caldwell, John O'Hara, Scott Fitzgerald

Poets:
Emily Dickinson, William Carlos William, Robert Frost, T. S. Elliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay