Eccentric Characters in 20th-Century Ethnic Literature

FAIN: HB-251276-17

Swati Rana
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)

A book-length study of race and character in American ethnic literature, 1900-1960.

Retrograde Minorities studies the vexed, conservative, and recalcitrant characters that elude the oppositional framework of ethnic literary criticism, which prioritizes resistance to dominant power structures. My chapters range from Ameen Rihani’s The Book of Khalid (1911) to Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), including work by José Garcia Villa, José Antonio Villarreal, and Dalip Singh Saund. I develop a hermeneutic for reading the problem characters in these works across formal and social spheres, and in so doing enliven the study of race and character both. This project presents a new comparative paradigm for ethnic literature and for the neglected writings of the early twentieth century, itself a retrograde period in a field that generally privileges post-1965 works. My readings reveal a new protagonist of the American dream: the racialized minority whose retrograde disavowal of race represents a crucial archetype of American exceptionalism and postracial ideology.

Associated Products

Race Characters: Ethnic Literature and the Figure of the American Dream (Book)
Title: Race Characters: Ethnic Literature and the Figure of the American Dream
Author: Swati Rana
Abstract: A vexed figure inhabits US literature and culture: the visibly racialized immigrant who disavows minority identity and embraces the American dream. In this book, Swati Rana builds on studies of character and racial form and offers a new way to view characterization through racialization that creates a fuller social reading of race.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/race-characters-ethnic-literature-and-the-figure-of-the-american-dream/oclc/1224017311&referer=brief_results
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781469659466
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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