Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0002
Swati Rana
This chapter explores the character of the imperialist immigrant that Ameen Rihani represents in his early work. Beginning with an epistolary volume, Letters to Uncle Sam, written from 1917 to 1919, this chapter focuses on The Book of Khalid (1911), a picaresque novel whose titular protagonist seeks as the “Superman of America” to found an Arab empire on the American model. This chapter analyzes the hyperproduction of character in the manic figure of Khalid and its reframing by a wry Editor, essentially the character function of Rihani. It demonstrates how Rihani indicts the American dream and the impossible identifications to which diasporic subjects and Arab Americans in particular are subjected.
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Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0003
Swati Rana
This chapter explores the ethnic character who severs art from biography through José Garcia Villa’s infamous disavowal of his racial and colonial identity. Focusing on Villa’s autobiographical short story cycle in Footnote to Youth (1933), this chapter rethinks Villa’s disavowal in terms of exposure. The grotesque characters of Villa’s fictive work draw attention to their own twisted forms and expose the social characterization of minorities and of Filipino colonial subjects, specifically their Orientalist and primitivist caricature. This chapter reveals Villa’s insistent disavowal of biography to be the result of social compulsion rather than eccentric choice.
{"title":"José Garcia Villa’s Book of Grotesques","authors":"Swati Rana","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the ethnic character who severs art from biography through José Garcia Villa’s infamous disavowal of his racial and colonial identity. Focusing on Villa’s autobiographical short story cycle in Footnote to Youth (1933), this chapter rethinks Villa’s disavowal in terms of exposure. The grotesque characters of Villa’s fictive work draw attention to their own twisted forms and expose the social characterization of minorities and of Filipino colonial subjects, specifically their Orientalist and primitivist caricature. This chapter reveals Villa’s insistent disavowal of biography to be the result of social compulsion rather than eccentric choice.","PeriodicalId":135034,"journal":{"name":"Race Characters","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124099132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0007
Swati Rana
The conclusion highlights the double movement of the book as it reveals the figure of the American dream and refracts this figure into all its complexity. Ethnic literature’s shared engagement with and inevitable difference from this figure brings out both ubiquity and unevenness. Constellating distinct literary traditions in this way develops new comparative methods and orientations to ethnic archives, along with a better understanding of how race and ethnicity are being realigned at present. The conclusion emphasizes what characterization as contestation accomplishes—how the interplay of the many facets of character across literary and social worlds breaks down persistent archetypes and foregrounds structural constraints. In closing, the book points to attentiveness, underscoring the agency of literature and of literary critique.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Swati Rana","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion highlights the double movement of the book as it reveals the figure of the American dream and refracts this figure into all its complexity. Ethnic literature’s shared engagement with and inevitable difference from this figure brings out both ubiquity and unevenness. Constellating distinct literary traditions in this way develops new comparative methods and orientations to ethnic archives, along with a better understanding of how race and ethnicity are being realigned at present. The conclusion emphasizes what characterization as contestation accomplishes—how the interplay of the many facets of character across literary and social worlds breaks down persistent archetypes and foregrounds structural constraints. In closing, the book points to attentiveness, underscoring the agency of literature and of literary critique.","PeriodicalId":135034,"journal":{"name":"Race Characters","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131137295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0005
Swati Rana
This chapter explores the character of model minority through the figure of the first Asian American member of Congress, Dalip Singh Saund, and his autobiography, Congressman from India (1960). Linking the autobiography to the emergence of the model minority myth, this chapter shows how Congressman from India uses the discourse of character building to shape the exemplary figure of Saund, obscuring structural inequality and occluding Saund’s racial presence. This a precarious posture that pivots between race and ethnicity, destabilizing the model that that Saund seeks to build and guiding readers to a critical perspective upon the American dream and Saund’s Cold War propaganda function.
{"title":"Building American Character","authors":"Swati Rana","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the character of model minority through the figure of the first Asian American member of Congress, Dalip Singh Saund, and his autobiography, Congressman from India (1960). Linking the autobiography to the emergence of the model minority myth, this chapter shows how Congressman from India uses the discourse of character building to shape the exemplary figure of Saund, obscuring structural inequality and occluding Saund’s racial presence. This a precarious posture that pivots between race and ethnicity, destabilizing the model that that Saund seeks to build and guiding readers to a critical perspective upon the American dream and Saund’s Cold War propaganda function.","PeriodicalId":135034,"journal":{"name":"Race Characters","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127175689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0006
Swati Rana
This chapter focuses on Paule Marshall’s characterization of Black upward mobility in the semiautobiographical novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959). While the main characters of mother and daughter are often opposed in terms of their orientation toward the American dream, this analysis draws them together in a chiasmus of character shaped by their shared experience of racism. The Brooklyn brownstone emblematizes the difficult succession of European and non-European immigrants, and Barbadian immigrants in particular, reorienting readers toward a structural critique. Shaped not just by individual will but by determinative social forces, the spectacular figure of self making is brought into focus as a constrained character to be integrated rather than disavowed.
{"title":"Paule Marshall’s Brown Girls","authors":"Swati Rana","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on Paule Marshall’s characterization of Black upward mobility in the semiautobiographical novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959). While the main characters of mother and daughter are often opposed in terms of their orientation toward the American dream, this analysis draws them together in a chiasmus of character shaped by their shared experience of racism. The Brooklyn brownstone emblematizes the difficult succession of European and non-European immigrants, and Barbadian immigrants in particular, reorienting readers toward a structural critique. Shaped not just by individual will but by determinative social forces, the spectacular figure of self making is brought into focus as a constrained character to be integrated rather than disavowed.","PeriodicalId":135034,"journal":{"name":"Race Characters","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128874325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0004
Swati Rana
This chapter focuses on racial betrayal across José Antonio Villarreal’s life and work. It analyzes the overdetermined character of Villarreal’s semiautobiographical novel, Pocho (1959), into which protagonist and author are collapsed. Readings excavate two dynamic and interrelated fields of characterization: the queer figure of El Malinche who emblematizes assimilative desire and the masculinist figure of El Macho who has a revolutionary consciousness of colonial subjection. Pocho reveals rather than reproducing the dominant heteropatriarchal order from which minority and Chicano masculinity take their bearings, exposing the discontinuous character of author and protagonist.
{"title":"Many Parts of Pocho","authors":"Swati Rana","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469659473.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on racial betrayal across José Antonio Villarreal’s life and work. It analyzes the overdetermined character of Villarreal’s semiautobiographical novel, Pocho (1959), into which protagonist and author are collapsed. Readings excavate two dynamic and interrelated fields of characterization: the queer figure of El Malinche who emblematizes assimilative desire and the masculinist figure of El Macho who has a revolutionary consciousness of colonial subjection. Pocho reveals rather than reproducing the dominant heteropatriarchal order from which minority and Chicano masculinity take their bearings, exposing the discontinuous character of author and protagonist.","PeriodicalId":135034,"journal":{"name":"Race Characters","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132713971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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