Selves in dialogue [electronic resource] : a transethnic approach to American life writing / edited by Begoña Simal.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Simal González, Begoña.

Series:

Critical approaches to ethnic American literature ; no. 5.

Critical approaches to ethnic American literature ; no. 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

United States--Ethnic relations.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (250 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Rodopi, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Selves in Dialogue: A Transethnic Approach to American Life Writing constitutes an explicit answer to the urgent call for a comparative study of American autobiography. This collection of essays ostensibly intends to cut across cultural, “racial” and/or “ethnic” boundaries, introducing the concept of “transethnicity” and arguing for its increasing validity in the ever-changing field of American Studies. Accordingly, the comparative analysis in Selves in Dialogue is implemented not by juxtaposing essays that pay “separate but equal” attention to specific “monoethnic” or “monocultural” traditions—as has been the usual strategy in book-length publications of this sort—, but by critically engaging with two or more different traditions in every single essay. Mixing rather than segregating. The transethnic approach proposed in this collection does not imply erasing the very difference and diversity that makes American autobiographies all the more thrilling to read and study. Group-specific research of an “intra-ethnic” nature should and will continue to thrive. And yet, the field of American Studies is now ready to indulge more freely, and more knowledgeably, in transethnic explorations of life writing, in an attempt to delineate both the divergences and the similarities between the different autobiographies written in the US. Because of its unusual perspective, Selves in Dialogue can be of interest not only for specialists in life writing, but also for those working in the larger fields of American Literature, Ethnic Studies or American Studies.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Selves in Dialogue: An Introduction / Begoña Simal

Identity Cards: Autobiography and Critical Practice / Jeffrey Gray

Self and Nation in Franklin’s Autobiography and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior / Ana M Manzanas

Ethnic Authorship and the Autobiographical Act: Zitkala-Ša, Sui Sin Far, and the Crafting of Authorial Identity / Rachel Ihara and Jaime Cleland

“We, Too, Sing America”: The Construction of American Subjectivity in African American Migration and European Immigrant Autobiographies / Brenda R. Smith

Native Journeys of Self-Figuration: N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands / La Frontera / Anna M. Brígido-Corachán

Memory in Motion: The “Double Narratives” of Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude and Samuel R. Delany’s The Motion of Light in Water / José Liste Noya

Autobiographical Writing on Politics in the Sin State: Latina and Basque American Perspectives / David Río

Puerto Rican and Dominican Self-Portraits and their Frames: The “Autobiographical” Fiction of Esmeralda Santiago, Junot Díaz, and Julia Álvarez / Aitor Ibarrola-Armendáriz

Living in the Taste of Things: Food, Self and Family in Diana Abu-Jaber’s The Language of Baklava and Leslie Li’s Daughter of Heaven / Paula Torreiro Pazo

Bibliography

Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-36620-7

9786613366207

94-012-0685-6

OCLC:

768083011

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401206853 DOI