Description
Book SynopsisA deep exploration of the ways in which postcolonial narrative fiction both acts on and is acted upon by the modern world.
Trade Review"Frederick Aldama's book seeks to transform the teaching of ethnic and postcolonial literature. Fusing borderland and postcolonial fiction as constituent elements of Anglophone world literature, Aldama's work flies in the face of conventional categories with energy and originality. Aldama's embrace of human universals of language and emotion, his resistance to strictures of identity, his sensitivity to historical contexts of creation and reception, and his respect for the autonomy of fictional worlds establish the ethical power of borderland and postcolonial narrative. Yet Aldama argues that fiction should not be bent to the purposes of political argument at the cost of interfering with the invitation to intense empathetic response and the unleashing of readers' world-creating imaginations. He rescues for literary study and for the humanities a core purpose of narrative world-making: the safe experiment with volatile materials." Suzanne Keen, Washington and Lee University
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Putting the World Back into Postcolonial and Latino Borderland Literature
- Chapter One: A User's Guide to Postcolonial and Latino Borderland Fiction
- Chapter Two: Putting the Fiction Back into Arundhati Roy
- Chapter Three: History as Handmaiden to Fiction in Amitav Ghosh
- Chapter Four: Fictional World Making in Zadie Smith and Hari Kunzru
- Chapter Five: This Is Your Brain on Latino Comics
- Chapter Six: Reading the Latino Borderland Short Story
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
