Rejection of Victimhood in Literature

by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto Urrea

Series: 

Transnational writers are increasingly opposed to representations of refugees, exiles, migrants, and their descendants as emblematic victims. With the rise of populist nationalisms in the USA and the UK in the eras of Trumpism, Brexit, and their aftermath, targets of nationalist groups have increasingly been represented, and thus constituted, as individual suffering victims. Certain groups embrace such representations. They use them to secure help and protection for themselves. Less scrupulous individuals may even embrace these representations to elide their own accountability and further nefarious goals. This book examines an intriguing selection of writers to show how they are attempting to recalibrate such stories to reject victimhood. It explores how just memory is deployed to ascribe agency to transnational characters.
Copyright Year:
2021
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-46900-6
Publication:
30 Aug 2021
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-46899-3
Publication:
26 Aug 2021
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Sean James Bosman is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Rhodes University, South Africa. He was awarded his Ph.D. from Rhodes in 2020. His research concentrates on articulations of memory in transnational literature.
Acknowledgements
Notes to the Reader

Introduction
 1 Background
 2 The Authors
 3 Just Memory
 4 Diaspora Space
 5 Nationalisms, Frames, and Precarity
 6 Transnationalism, Hybridity, and Pluralist Governmentality
 7 Hospitality in the Diaspora Space
 8 Structure of the Book

1 Abdulrazak Gurnah
 1 Precarity and Entanglement
 2 Zanzibar as a Diaspora Space
 3 Entanglement of Stories
 4 Appropriation of Symbols
 5 Stories and Memory
 6 Closing Remarks

2 Viet Thanh Nguyen
 1 An Emerging Forerunner
 2 Memories of Betrayal
 3 Ghosts and Just Memory
 4 Representing Themselves
 5 Recovering the ‘Ultimate Gook’
 6 Closing Remarks

3 Luis Alberto Urrea
 1 Writing from the Borderland
 2 The Latino Threat Narrative
 3 Nobody Liked Nobody
 4 Lacunae and Memories
 5 The Familia de la Raza
 6 Closing Remarks

4 Comparative Analysis
 1 Complicating the Reverence for Transnationalism
 2 Undermining the Superiority of Host Diaspora Spaces
 3 The Industry of Memory
 4 Rejection of Victimhood
 5 Transborder Familial Dynamics
 6 Closing Remarks

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

The market is sholarly, and is located around literary, transnational, postcolonial, and migration studies. The book should interest undergraduates and advanced scholars of comparative literature, and literary transnationalism.
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