Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism

Aparajita Nanda, recipient of a Fulbright faculty teaching scholarship and a Visiting Associate Professorship to the departments of English and African American Studies, UC Berkeley, has taught at Jadavpur University, India and now teaches both at UC Berkeley and Santa Clara University. Her most recent publications include Romancing the Strange, Black California, The Strangled Cry, and articles in Ariel and Callaloo.

'Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism provides new perspectives on how contemporary ethnic writers, filmmakers and visual artists animate in original, distinctive, and creative ways the transnational spaces they encounter in the present and recover from the past. These discussions of hybrid texts infused by hybrid cultures—of counterfactual histories and alternative futures; of refugees and migrants; of forgotten artists and erased civilizations; of nomads, cautious cosmopolites, and citizens of the world—all help us think in fresh ways about transnational communities, global mobility, trauma, loss, and the complex flow of cultures across borders.'-- Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, Professor of English, and Director of American Studies, Stanford University 'This rich anthology does not merely transnationalize ethnic studies but also ethnicizes transnationalism. A novel foray into new frontiers of ethnic studies within and beyond the United States, it makes an important contribution to studies of ethnicity, diaspora, transnationalism, postcoloniality, and multiculturalism. Highly recommended.'-- Shu-mei Shih, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Hong Kong'A thought -provoking collection which addresses the current transnational turn in the USA as it impinges on ethnic literatures, reframing them in relation to the cross-currents of world literature and the tensions between global forces and ethnic subcultures.'-- Janet Wilson, Department of English, University of Northampton, UK'These essays seek variously to de-provincialise U. S. American studies by setting to work the ‘transnationalist turn’. Returning the United States to its postcolonial as well as superpower trajectory, the collection reveals how ethnic and postcolonial studies, no less than diaspora studies, must be at the heart of any broaching of transnationalism within a neo-liberal globalizing frame. Spanning contemporary London, Oklahoma, and Ethiopia, Beijing as well as the British Commonwealth, this wide-ranging book evidences richly the utopian potential of transnational literature, in Bill Ashcroft’s phrase, for envisaging a less border-burdened world. Those seeking a Benjaminian interruption in the stream of time, a breaching of an otherwise ceaseless ‘repetition of unfulfilled expectations’, to quote Jonathan Flatley on W. E. B. DuBois, will find much of compelling interest here.'-- Donna Landry, Professor, FRAS, School of English, Rutherford College, University of Kent, UK

• Preface by Rafael Perez-Torres Introduction Aparajita Nanda Part I: Identity Politics 1. Beyond Identity: Bearings Wlad Godzich 2. ‘One Like Me’: The Refugee as Relational Figure Keith P. Feldman 3. Transnational Identity and the Muslim Diaspora in Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly Esra Mirze Santesso 4. Power, Politics, and the Post-National world of Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood Aparajita Nanda 5. ‘Exotic Fagdom’: The Baraka of Surplus Love in a Transnational Context Suelghee Lee Part II: Legacy/Trauma/Healing 6. Rethinking Reconciliation: Reflections on Genocide in Africa Pal Ahluwalia 7. Chinese Communism, Cultural Revolution, and American Multiculturalism Steven Lee 8. Rita Dove’s Sonata Mulattica: A Transatlantic Genre for the Restoration of History Cameron Bushnell 9. Animal Ghosts, Colonial Haunting: History’s Presence(s) beyond Benjamin and Derrida Cassel Busse 10. Paul Beatty’s Slumberland and the Myth of Blackness George Hoagland Part III: Literary Crossings 11. A Borderless World: Literature, Nation, Transnation Bill Ashcroft 12. National Identity Reconsidered: The Intersection of Ethnicity and Sexuality in The Book of Salt Debora Stefani 13. Writing at the Crossroads: The Black Atlantic, Transnation and Virginia Woolf in Biyi Bandele’s The Street Pamela McCallum 14. Revisioning Al-Andalus in Nacer Khemir’s film, The Dove’s Lost Necklace Cynthia Mahamdi 15. The Language of Nation beyond Borders: The Bilingual Trilogy of Francisco Jimenez Juan Velasco Part IV: Established and Emerging Canons: Revisions and Re-Visions 16. Countering Visual Regimes: History, Place and Subjectivity in the Art of Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds Hertha D. Sweet Wong 17. Transnational Feminisms and "Double Understanding": What Academic Women's Memoirs Reveal Wendy Robbins, with Clarissa Hurley and Robin Sutherland 18. Radical Connections/Radical Breaks: African American Writers and the Haiku Form Meta L. Schettler 19. Chinese Obsession, Racial Melancholia, and Male Hysteria: Recuperating Taiwanese American Writer Liu Da-ren in (Chinese) American Studies Su-ching Huang Afterword by John C. Hawley