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Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Situated at the intersection of post-classical narratology and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic, and cultural studies, the contributions to this edited volume interrogate the complex and varied ways in which ethnic American authors use narrative form to engage readers in issues related to race and ethnicity, along with other important identity markers such as class, religion, gender, and sexuality. Importantly, the book also explores how paying attention to the formal features of ethnic American literatures changes our under-standing of narrative theory and how narrative theories can help us to think about author functions and race. The international and diverse group of contributors includes top scholars in narrative theory and in race and ethnic studies, and the texts they analyze concern a wide variety of topics, from the representation of time and space to the narration of trauma and other deeply emotional memories to the importance of literary paratexts, genre structures, and author functions.
List of contents
Introduction: Narrative Encounters with Ethnic American Literatures
Alexa Weik von Mossner
PART 1: Narrating Race and Ethnicity across Time and Space
- Indigenous Time / Indigenous Narratives: The Political Implications of Non-Linear Time in Contemporary Native Fiction
James J. Donahue
- Time(s) of Race: Narrative Temporalities, Epistemic Storytelling, and the Human Species in Ted Chiang
Matthias Klestil
- Polychronic Narration, Trauma, Disenfranchised Grief, and Mario Alberto Zambrano's Lotería
Mario Grill
- Whole New Worlds: An Exploration of Narrative Strategies Used in Afrodiasporic Speculative Fiction
Marlene D. Allen Ahmed
PART 2: Haunting Memories: Narrative, Race, and Emotion
- Emotions that Haunt: Attachment Relations in Lan Samantha Chang's Fiction
W. Michelle Wang
- Race, Trauma, and the Emotional Legacies of Slavery in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing
Marijana Mikic
- "There Were Strands of Darker Stories": Reading Third-Generation Holocaust Literature as Midrash
Stella Setka
- Stories, Love, and Baklava: Narrating Food in Diana Abu-Jaber's Culinary Memoirs
Alexa Weik von Mossner
PART 3: Race, Ethnicity, and Paratexts: Genre Structures and Author Functions
- Healing Narratives: Historical Representations in Latinx Young Adult Literature
Elizabeth Garcia
- Blood and Soil: Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony
Patrick Colm Hogan
- Metaparatextual Satire in Percival Everett's The Book of Training and Kent Monkman's Shame and Prejudice
Derek C. Maus
- Author Functions, Literary Functions, and Racial Representations or What We Talk about When We Talk about Diversifying Narrative Studies
Jennifer Ho
About the author
Alexa Weik von Mossner is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria.
Marijana Mikić is a PhD researcher on the FWF-funded project “Narrative Encounters with Ethnic American Literatures” at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria.
Mario Grill is a PhD researcher on the FWF-funded project “Narrative Encounters with Ethnic American Literatures” at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.
Summary
Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States.At the intersection of narrative theory and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic and cultural studies, it interrogates how American authors use narrative form to engage readers in race and ethnicity
