Opening Acts

Catherine Romagnolo is an associate professor of English and chair of the Department of English at Lebanon Valley College. Her work has appeared in Studies in the Novel and Analyzing World Fiction: New Horizons in Narrative Theory and has been anthologized in Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices (Nebraska, 2009).

"A welcome addition to the field of narrative theory."-Marilyn Edelstein, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature “The field of feminist narratology is growing, but none of these theory-driven books offers the kind of rich, in-depth study of one historical-geographical collocation of texts that Opening Acts does. Any teacher or student of literary theory, of the history of the novel, or of feminist and ethnic approaches to literature would find something of great interest in this book.”-Margaret Homans, professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University and author of Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing “The subject of narrative beginnings is important to literary criticism in several different fields: national literary traditions as well as comparative literature. . . . Romagnolo seeks to right the course of the early studies in this area by emphasizing feminist and ethnic-studies-inflected readings. Opening Acts contributes an overview of the existing literature, an assessment of what is lacking in that corpus, and an extrapolation of concepts to include often-neglected subjects in this field . . . expanding the established theoretical frame for narrative beginnings.”-Carlos RiobÓ, chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the City College of New York and author of Cuban Intersection of Literary and Urban Spaces

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. No Place for Her Individual Adventure: Motherhood, Marriage, and New Beginnings in Summer2. Waves of Beginnings: The Ebb of Heterosexual Romance in Paint It Today3. Moving in Lofty Spirals: Circularity and Narrative Beginnings in The Bluest Eye4. Circling the History of Slavery: Multilayered Beginnings in Beloved5. Swan Feathers and Coca-Cola: Authenticity and Origins in The Joy Luck Club6. Bordering Yolanda GarcÍa: Recessive Origins in How the GarcÍa Girls Lost Their AccentsConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex