Examining whiteness : reading Clarice Lispector through Bessie Head and Toni Morrison / Lucia Villares.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Villares, Lúcia, 1954-

Language:

English

Portuguese

Subjects (All):

Lispector, Clarice--Criticism and interpretation.

Lispector, Clarice.

Head, Bessie, 1937-1986.

Head, Bessie.

Morrison, Toni, 1931-2019.

Morrison, Toni.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

202 pages ; 26 cm

Other Title:

Reading Clarice Lispector through Bessie Head and Toni Morrison

Place of Publication:

London : Legenda, 2011.

Language Note:

English and Portuguese.

Summary:

"Critics consider Clarice Lispector the leading female writer in the Brazilian literary canon. Her connections with the nation, however, seem to magically disappear as her work is analysed. This paradox is the starting point for this analysis of the works of an author who--despite being born in the Ukraine--grew up to become an irreplaceable presence in Brazilian literature. Non-Brazilian authors, such as the South African Bessie Head and the North American Toni Morrison, provide triggering concepts to help tackle a blind-spot in Brazilian culture: the issue of racial difference. From this new perspective overlooked black characters in Lispector's work become crucial and relevant, and whiteness emerges as an iunexamined set of norms"--Publisher's description, back cover.

Contents:

Introduction : Clarice Lispector, subjectivity and the national. The threshold of the unspeakable

The pathological as a way into the national

Part I. 'A Question of Power" : unspeakable miscegenation ; Haunting in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'

Part II. Welcoming the ghost : haunting in "A paixão segundo G. H.' ; Whiteness and the construction of subjectivity in 'O lustre' ; Modernization and the phantasmagoria of commodities in 'A cidade sitiada' ; Racism and the performance of whiteness in 'A hora da estrela'

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [194]-198) and index.

ISBN:

9781906540470

1906540470

OCLC:

757855989