Miriam Driessen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888528042
- eISBN:
- 9789882204416
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528042.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Unmet expectations inspire narratives of bitterness among Chinese road builders. These tales of suffering, however, derive not only from the obstacles they face on the construction site, but also ...
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Unmet expectations inspire narratives of bitterness among Chinese road builders. These tales of suffering, however, derive not only from the obstacles they face on the construction site, but also from their backgrounds as sons of peasants who are struggling to cast off their rural backgrounds – migrants who are forced to move overseas to climb up the social ladder in China, and men who seek to gain respectability as sons, husbands, and fathers. Their hopes of fashioning Ethiopian laborers are intricately linked to expectations regarding themselves. The bitterness reflected in their tales derives as much from their predicaments abroad as at home. Yet speaking their bitterness also has a positive twist and fulfills a crucial function. Juxtaposing conditions of victimhood with collective strength in enduring these conditions, the narratives offset self-pity by celebrating perseverance, lending workers the strength to carry on.Less
Unmet expectations inspire narratives of bitterness among Chinese road builders. These tales of suffering, however, derive not only from the obstacles they face on the construction site, but also from their backgrounds as sons of peasants who are struggling to cast off their rural backgrounds – migrants who are forced to move overseas to climb up the social ladder in China, and men who seek to gain respectability as sons, husbands, and fathers. Their hopes of fashioning Ethiopian laborers are intricately linked to expectations regarding themselves. The bitterness reflected in their tales derives as much from their predicaments abroad as at home. Yet speaking their bitterness also has a positive twist and fulfills a crucial function. Juxtaposing conditions of victimhood with collective strength in enduring these conditions, the narratives offset self-pity by celebrating perseverance, lending workers the strength to carry on.
Marissa K. López
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814752616
- eISBN:
- 9780814753293
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814752616.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter presents a reading of four novels—Alicia Gaspar de Alba's Desert Blood (2005), Martín Limón's The Door to Bitterness (2005), and Mario Acevedo's The Nymphos of Rocky Flats (2006) and The ...
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This chapter presents a reading of four novels—Alicia Gaspar de Alba's Desert Blood (2005), Martín Limón's The Door to Bitterness (2005), and Mario Acevedo's The Nymphos of Rocky Flats (2006) and The Undead Kama Sutra (2008)—and explores the connections between nativism and imperial capital through the figure of the Chicana/o detective. Detective fiction thematizes surveillance and paranoia, both of which emerge as products of the War on Terror, and are represented in the novels in three domains: the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, technologies of surveillance, and discourses of international trade in people and commodities. The novels trace a progression through the shifting spaces of Chicana/o literature and provide a discursive map of its global engagement. This spatial progression charts an expanding arena for Chicana/o racial and ethnic identity, while arguing for a definition of chicanismo as acritical mode of engaging with U.S. power.Less
This chapter presents a reading of four novels—Alicia Gaspar de Alba's Desert Blood (2005), Martín Limón's The Door to Bitterness (2005), and Mario Acevedo's The Nymphos of Rocky Flats (2006) and The Undead Kama Sutra (2008)—and explores the connections between nativism and imperial capital through the figure of the Chicana/o detective. Detective fiction thematizes surveillance and paranoia, both of which emerge as products of the War on Terror, and are represented in the novels in three domains: the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, technologies of surveillance, and discourses of international trade in people and commodities. The novels trace a progression through the shifting spaces of Chicana/o literature and provide a discursive map of its global engagement. This spatial progression charts an expanding arena for Chicana/o racial and ethnic identity, while arguing for a definition of chicanismo as acritical mode of engaging with U.S. power.
