Browse

This book, written partly in the Cherokee syllabary by a Cherokee critic, argues that William Bradford's Of Plimoth Plantation shows evidence of American Indian poetics. It is a revisioning of the genesis of American literary history. The book reveals that, from its earliest moments, American literature has owed its distinctive shape to the determining influence of American Indian thought and culture. It demonstrates the extent of this influence by identifying the scores of Native historical, biographical, and ceremonial texts, as well as vocabularies, compositional principles, and rhetorical strategies, embedded in Bradford's history. The book emphasizes that American literature did not begin with European-American colonial writings, but rather in the oral traditions and ceremonial rituals of America's five hundred indigenous Nations. The verbal power of these ancient oralities invaded the newly forming American letters.

It has long been accepted that film helped shape the Modernist novel and that Modernist poetry would be inconceivable without the typewriter. Yet radio, a key influence on Modernist literature, remains the invisible medium. The contributors to this book argue that radio led to changes in textual and generic forms. Modernist authors embraced the emerging medium, creating texts that were to be heard but not read, incorporating the device into their stories, and using it to publicize their work. They saw in radio the same spirit of experimentation that animated Modernism itself. Because early broadcasts were rarely recorded, radio's influence on literary Modernism often seems equally ephemeral in the historical record. This book helps fill this void, providing a new perspective for Modernist studies even as it reconfigures the landscape of the era itself.

This book investigates the exilic literature of Caribbean-born and Caribbean-descent writers who, from their new location in North America, question their cultural obligation of Caribbeanness, Creoleness, and even Blackness. This new consciousness has led them to challenge their roots as they search for a creative autonomy deemed treacherous by the home community. Though their poetics are infused with an enticing sense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, their deviance is not always defiant. As author Boisseron argues, a burden of guilt is one of the defining features of the modern Caribbean diaspora. While untangling the complex rhetoric of cultural debt, betrayal, and guilt at the heart of Caribbean diasporic discourse, Creole Renegades proposes to expose a more human, albeit more flawed and vulnerable, side of the modern Creole subject. Boisseron delves into the ways in which the second-generation Caribbean diaspora moves beyond nationality, communitarianism, and cultural belonging to embrace its individual subjectivity and personal needs, thus raising controversy at home and abroad about its disengagement. What is the role of the migrant writer in cultures and histories pressured by the need of cultural remittance? Does the expatriate writer feed or feed off the home country when writing about home miseries? Where should we cross the line between “individualism” and “opportunism” in a diasporic context? Should racial allegiance be a necessary component of the Creole black diasporic community in America? These are some of the key questions this book raises.

Since 1979, when travel to Cuba from the United States opened up, thousands of Cuban Americans have visited the island on a short-term basis to reunite with their families and reacquaint themselves with their birthplace. Such topics as outbound migration and the adaptation process of Cubans in the host society have received considerable attention in academia, while the subject of return as it pertains to Cuban Americans has been largely neglected. Exclusively devoted to the subject, this book explores narratives on the return to Cuba of individuals of the so-called one-and-a-half generation (those who left Cuba as children or adolescents). Some of the narratives feature a physical return; others depict a metaphorical or vicarious going back through fictional characters or childhood reminiscences. Among the writers and artists addressed are Ruth Behar, María Brito, Carlos Eire, Cristina García, Ana Mendieta, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Ernesto Pujol, and Achy Obejas. Through a critical reading of their work, the book highlights the affective ties as well as the tensions underlying the relationships between the authors and their native country. Also explored is a complementary subject, the portrayal of returnees in Cuban literature and popular arts on the island.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of José Martí’s writing about race and ethnic groups and of the influence of his life in the United States (1880–1895) on these topics. Separate chapters cover Martí’s experience with Afro-Cubans in the United States, his writing about blacks in post–Civil War North America, his fascination with U.S. abolitionism, his multiple levels of engagement with Indian groups in the Americas, and his accounts about ethnic groups in late-nineteenth-century U.S. life. A chapter on the challenges of racism describes the racial climate of Martí’s time, how racial condescension and stereotyping affected U.S./Cuban relations and how Martí addressed issues such as social Darwinism. Initial chapters present a brief biographical sketch and an overview of what has been written about Martí and race. A key component of this text is the focus on Martí’s famous essay “Nuestra América”(Our America) and how it conveys Martí’s thinking about race, especially through translation. A concluding chapter offers a summary and conclusions.

This book argues that discourses of masculinity circulating in the cultural and political sphere in the Dominican Republic, including in much of the country’s literary canon, structure notions of citizenship and state power in problematic ways. However, Masculinity after Trujillo challenges prevalent understandings of Dominican masculinity as primarily an outgrowth of a long-standing Latin American patriarchal “tradition” and highlights how masculinity has been transformed over time, including by the Rafael L. Trujillo dictatorship (1930–1961) and through the impact of U.S. imperialism and other transnational impulses. Drawing from the work of political theorist Ernesto Laclau, I show how these notions of masculinity have far-ranging effects on Dominican political and public culture today and help to sustain a political status quo that fails to alleviate deep-seated economic and social inequities, forcing many Dominicans to emigrate. Problematically, I argue, these dominant gender discourses are reproduced in the works of some of the most important post-dictatorship Dominican intellectuals and writers, including in the works of Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, the foremost living Dominican novelist. This context gives therefore both a particular cultural and political weight to the alternative gender and sexual repertoires that I trace in the work of Dominican and Dominican American writers, including Hilma Contreras, Rita Indiana Hernández, and Junot Díaz. From within a historically and culturally specific framework that is mindful of the ineluctable role of outside forces and of continual cultural changes, this book thus asks how Caribbean literature and culture contribute to envisioning greater gender equality, sexual justice, and, more broadly, enhanced citizenship in the region.

The central premise of this book is that missionary evangelicalism has been an integral feature of American imperial ventures since the founding of the Republic. The book demonstrates that from the early nineteenth century to the present, American fiction writers have often sought to represent—and critique—America's missionary identity in their work. In the process it defines the missionary novel as a distinct sub-genre of fictional narrative, explains how it came into being, and identifies its primary characteristics. From Melville's Typee and Omoo to Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, from Michener's Hawaii to LaHaye's Left Behind series, the book traces the various manifestations of the missionary novel over time. The close readings of individual works also treat selected novels of Sedgwick, Cooper, Hobart, McKay, and Lewis, as well as several examples of Twain's short fiction. Weaving together political, theological, and literary analyses, this investigation examines a broad range of works, featuring both those that celebrate and those that criticize American missionaries at home and abroad. The book illuminates fascinating relationships between Christian evangelicalism and American destiny, including cultural and religious imperialism, and concludes with a disturbing judgment on the limitations of contemporary versions of the genre.

In this in-depth study of Bernard Shaw's most controversial drama, Major Barbara (1905), Sidney P. Albert traces the play's profound connections with Plato's Republic and Euripides's Bacchae, providing a comprehensive reading that evokes unexplored depths of meaning and challenges prevailing conceptions. Albert reveals deeper dimensions of the work that have gone previously unexplored and demonstrates the influence these classics had on Shaw's development as an artist and philosopher. He explores the Dionysian and Platonic elements in Major Barbara to illuminate how classical themes were modernized by Shaw. While examining the interrelations of the central characters in their social settings, Shaw, Plato, and Euripides searches out the complex layers of meaning in one of Shaw's most enigmatic dramas. Albert convincingly reveals Shaw's interaction with Greek thought in a way that reconfirms ancient wisdom yet goes beyond it, adapting it to the social, political, and humanistic perspectives of the modern world. It is the only full-length book published on Shaw's important drama Major Barbara and is one of very few books demonstrating the importance of Shaw's classical influences. It provides a uniquely balanced and comprehensive close reading of Major Barbara that lays to rest numerous partial, unbalanced readings of the drama by critics.