Description
Book SynopsisA sustained analysis of Transatlantic women's literature of the twentieth century, focusing on narratives of travel and adventure, with an expansion of the Transatlantic concept beyond the familiar US-UK axis to encompass Canada, South America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe.
Trade ReviewSince theories of transnationalism and globalization have often been accused of privileging the male gaze, Macpherson's book, by reconsidering a wide range of women's writing from a transatlantic perspective, also makes an important contribution to wider issues in cultural politics. Her argument encompasses authors not normally considered within this kind of critical framework and it produces a book of some critical sophistication. -- Paul Giles, Professor of American Literature, University of Oxford Macpherson opens her s tudy with an extremely useful survey of recent theories about travel and travel writing, and about womens' travel narratives in particular... Her individual readings usefully open up, through localized textual discussion, what it may mean to feel "foreign", and how women, in particular, may engage with this affect--which is, as she makes clear, not necessarily a disorienting experience in a negative sense. -- Kate Flint, Rutgers University Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature Since theories of transnationalism and globalization have often been accused of privileging the male gaze, Macpherson's book, by reconsidering a wide range of women's writing from a transatlantic perspective, also makes an important contribution to wider issues in cultural politics. Her argument encompasses authors not normally considered within this kind of critical framework and it produces a book of some critical sophistication. Macpherson opens her s tudy with an extremely useful survey of recent theories about travel and travel writing, and about womens' travel narratives in particular... Her individual readings usefully open up, through localized textual discussion, what it may mean to feel "foreign", and how women, in particular, may engage with this affect--which is, as she makes clear, not necessarily a disorienting experience in a negative sense.
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Part One: The Exoticised Other; 1. Constructing Race across the Atlantic: Nella Larsen's Quicksand; 2. Assimilation in the Heartland: Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine; Part Two: Memoirs and Transatlantic Travel; 3. The Anti-Tourist: Jenny Diski's Skating to Antarctica and Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America With Interruptions; 4. 'There is No World Outside the Text': Transatlantic Slippage in Eve Hoffman's Lost in Translation; Part Three: Negotiating the Foreign/ Re-Inventing Home; 5. Revisiting the Family: Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist; 6. Cross-Dressing and Transnational Space: Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune; Conclusion.
