An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk

An American Mosaic is an anthology of writings developed in workshops directed by Robert Wolf between 1989 and 1998 for people without literary ambition. Wolf's first series of workshops were with homeless men and women in Nashville. Wolf established the non-profit Free River Press to publish their work and the press eventually issued six chapbooks by the Nashville writers. Later, in 1991, when he moved to Iowa, Wolf gathered neighboring farmers together on Monday evenings for over two winters, during which times they told and wrote stories. The group eventually produced three books and was featured on NPR's "Morning Edition." In the next few years Wolf documented life in small Midwestern and southern towns, and stories from these workshops, along with writings by the Nashville homeless and the Iowa farmers, are included in An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk (Oxford University Press, 1999). The book is now available from Free River Press.

Inspired by America Today, Thomas Hart Benton’s 1932 panorama of the United States, An American Mosaic consists of four panels: Prose and Poetry by the Homeless; Rural America: The Midwest; Communal Life; and The River and the Delta. Robert Wolf, connects these panels with interpretive essays on contemporary America.

“Bob Wolf’s approach to oral history is unique . . . His work is more than a lament, it is a battle cry.”                                                 — Studs Terkel

Reviews of AN AMERICAN MOSAIC

“Like Walt Whitman and Studs Terkel, Wolf hears America singing, and he wants us all to listen.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

“Wolf hears America singing by recording poems and essays by the homeless, farmers, commune inhabitants, and residents of small river towns, the most common and least represented element in our urban, urbane culture. What weaves these pieces together is a sense of sadness and nostalgia because a way of life is disappearing. Wolf sees the rapid technological advances of the past few decades as increasingly dehumanizing. Jettisoned in its wake, he theorizes, are the thousands of mentally ill homeless, the newly unemployed and impoverished, the low-tech and depressed small-town dwellers, and the abandoned company ghosts of the manufacturing era. Local education has failed in the misery belt ‘because those driving this society are, as a class, anti-intellectual and unimaginative.' These elegiac themes dominate.” —Kirkus Reviews

“. . . American Mosaic [is] a wonderful collection of poetry, prose, short stories, essays and commentaries by ordinary people whose wisdom and grace are easily ignored in contemporary American intellectual life. . . Wolf's writing workshops produce first-person accounts of what it means to be an American--accounts which permit readers to escape the stereotypical portraits of the homeless, the rural poor, and the hidden denizens of small towns in America too frequently proffered by our mass media as truthful representations of American folksiness.” —Peter Schmidt, Director, Upper School, Gill St. Bernard School