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This interdisciplinary investigation argues that since the 1990s, discourses about mixed-race heritage in the United States have taken the shape of a veritable literary genre, here termed “memoir of the search.” The study uses four different texts to explore this non-fictional genre, including Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family and Shirlee Taylor Haizlip's The Sweeter the Juice. All feature a protagonist using methods from archival investigation to DNA-testing to explore an intergenerational family secret; photographs and family trees; and the trip to the American South, which is identified as the site of the secret’s origin and of the family’s past. As a genre, these texts negotiate...
Rosalia Baena’s theoretically challenging, analytical volume of essays, explores the diversity of shapes that transcultural life writing takes, demonstrating how it has become one of the most dynamic and productive literary forms of self-inscription and self-representation. Expanding much of the contemporary criticism on life writing, which tends to centre on content, the essays highlight that reading contemporary forms of life writing from a literary perspective is a rich field of critical intervention that has been overlooked because of recent cultural studies’ concerns with material issues. To read life writing as primarily cultural texts undercuts much of its value as a complex dynamic of cultural production, where aesthetic concerns and the choice and manipulation of form serve as signifying aspects to experiences and subjectivities. This book was previously published as a special issue of Prose Studies.
In this era of increasing global mobility, identities are too complex to be captured by concepts that rely on national borders for reference. Such identities are not unified or stable, but are fluid entities which constantly push at the boundaries of the nation-state, thereby re-defining themselves and the nation-state simultaneously. Contemporary literature pays specific attention to internal and external notions of belonging ("Politics of Motion") and definitions of self resulting from interpersonal relationships ("Politics of Longing"). This collection looks at texts by authors who are British, American, or Canadian, but for whom a self-definition according national parameters is insufficient.
U.S. Latino Literature is defined as Latino literature within the United States that embraces the heterogeneous inter-groupings of Latinos. For too long U.S. Latino literature has not been thought of as an integral part of the overall shared American literary landscape, but that is slowly changing. This dictionary aims to rectify some of those misconceptions by proving that Latinos do fundamentally express American issues, concerns and perspectives with a flair in linguistic cadences, familial themes, distinct world views, and cross-cultural voices. The Historical Dictionary of U.S. Latino Literature contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has cross-referenced entries on U.S. Latino/a authors, and terms relevant to the nature of U.S. Latino literature in order to illustrate and corroborate its foundational bearings within the overall American literary experience. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this subject.
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This collection focuses on how literary creativity and historical inscriptions produce texts that require nuanced readings of forms of life writing. These reflections support the use of life writing as an interpretative frame for historical information, validating it for historical discourse as the act of telling and writing one's story affirms as it performs identity. The approach is based on a methodology that connects genre studies and historiography, to arrive at conclusions about the writing of the history of globalization, immigration, racial and ethnic negotiation.
This collection of essays, prepared by an international team of scholars and translators, examines the ways in which Henry James was translated, published and reviewed in Europe.
Article abstracts and citations of reviews and dissertations covering the United States and Canada.
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