Memory and Cultural Politics

New Approaches to American Ethnic Literatures

EDITED BY Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., Robert E. Hogan

Northeastern University Press • Boston Contents

Preface xi

Introduction 3

Ethnographic Politics: The Uses of Memory in Ethnic Fiction William Boelhower 19

The Plural Self: The Politicization of Memory and Form in Three American Ethnic Autobiographies

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez 41

Telling History: Inventing Identity in Jewish American Fiction Victoria Aarons 60

Nostalgia and Ambiguity in Martha Lamont's "Crow and Her Seagull Slaves" Toby C. S. Langen 87

Oppression and Repression: Personal and Collective Memory in Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

G. Thomas Couser 106

Tilling the Soil to Find Ourselves: Labor, Memory, and Identity in Ernest J. Gaines's Of Love and Dust

Herman Beavers 121 Contents

Memory and the Matrix of History: The Poetics of Loss and Recovery in Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Toni Morrison's Beloved

Gurleen Grewal 140

The Role of Memory in August Wilson's Four-Hundred-Year Autobiography

Sandra G. Shannon 175

Beyond Mimicry: The Poetics of Memory and Authenticity in Derek Walcott's Another Life

Sandra Pouchet Paquet 194

The Politics of Memory: Remembering History in Alice Walker and Joy Kogawa

David Palumbo-Liu 211

Producing History and Telling Stories: Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men and Zeese Papanikolas's Buried Unsung

Yiorgos Kalogeras 227

Yearning for the Past: The Dynamics of Memory in Sansei Internment Poetry

Stan Yogi 245

Arab American Literature and the Politics of Memory

Lisa Suhair Majaj 266

Feathering the Serpent: Chicano Mythic "Memory"

Rafael Perez-Torres 291

vm Contents

Chicanismo as Memory: The Fictions of Rudolfo Anaya, Nash Candelaria, Sandra Cisneros, and Ron Arias

A. Robert Lee 320

Select Bibliography 341

Editors and Contributors 345

Index 349

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