Migrant aesthetics : contemporary fiction, global migration, and the limits of empathy / Glenda Carpio.
| Author/creator | Carpio, Glenda author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | New York : Columbia University Press, [2023] |
| Description | xii, 285 pages ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Literature now Literature now. ^A1192674 |
| Abstract | "Traditionally, the American immigrant novel has been characterized by the plot of assimilation and stories about becoming (or failing to become) American. However, the focus on individual stories of transcendence (the migrants that "make it,") often obfuscates larger forces that lead to migration and determine the conditions once migrants arrive. The genre of immigrant literature also depends on a model of reading empathetically that can easily slip into projection and condescension. As Glenda Carpio argues, the semi/autobiographical tales of Americanization tend to reinforce difference and keep non-immigrant readers in the sentimental terrain where feeling badly for sufferers is a privilege, a commodity that gets packaged and sold. In Migrant Aesthetics, Glenda Carpio focuses on how a set of contemporary novelists, including Teju Cole, Dinaw Mengetsu, Aleksandar Hemon, Valeria Luiselli, Julie Otsuka, Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, frame migration crises on a broad, as opposed to a personal, scale and the formal strategies they employ to examine larger forces shaping migration. Through their particular styles, these writers highlight historical resonances across genres, as well as across time and space, to reveal the broad scale of migration and its relationship to the slave trade, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. These writers' works foreclose standard empathetic readings by rejecting autobiography in favor of strategic anonymity, choral or collective narration, unlikable narrators, and shifting vantage points. Ultimately, these writers challenge the view that migration is the problem of the migrant, who must beg admission to sites of power"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Carpio, Glenda. Migrant aesthetics New York : Columbia University Press, [2023] 9780231557023 |
| Genre/form | Criticism, interpretation, etc. |
| Genre/form | Literary criticism. |
| Genre/form | Literary criticism. |
| Genre/form | Critiques litteĢraires. |
| LCCN | 2022059810 |
| ISBN | 9780231207577 |
| ISBN | 9780231207560 (hardback ; acid-free paper) |
| ISBN | 0231207565 (hardback ; acid-free paper) |
| ISBN | 0231207573 (trade paperback ; acid-free paper) |
| ISBN | (ebook) |
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