Jeehyun Lim
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823275304
- eISBN:
- 9780823277032
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823275304.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Chapter five examines the writings of Julia Alvarez and Ha Jin as examples of literary bilingual brokering in the age of global English. As writers of bi-national scope in their writings, Alvarez and ...
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Chapter five examines the writings of Julia Alvarez and Ha Jin as examples of literary bilingual brokering in the age of global English. As writers of bi-national scope in their writings, Alvarez and Ha Jin explore a cultural politics of circulation to dislodge the assumption of an organic relationship between national language and literature. However, the coexistence of World Literature in English and US multicultural literature in these writers’ works places their representations of political oppression and human rights abuse abroad within the pedagogy of neoliberal multiculturalism at home that is geared toward an individualistic understanding of freedom and rights. Even as Alvarez and Ha Jin seek to claim belonging in the homeland of language outside the narrow confines of national literature, that choice itself is circumscribed by the cultural politics of writing in English at a time of global English hegemony.Less
Chapter five examines the writings of Julia Alvarez and Ha Jin as examples of literary bilingual brokering in the age of global English. As writers of bi-national scope in their writings, Alvarez and Ha Jin explore a cultural politics of circulation to dislodge the assumption of an organic relationship between national language and literature. However, the coexistence of World Literature in English and US multicultural literature in these writers’ works places their representations of political oppression and human rights abuse abroad within the pedagogy of neoliberal multiculturalism at home that is geared toward an individualistic understanding of freedom and rights. Even as Alvarez and Ha Jin seek to claim belonging in the homeland of language outside the narrow confines of national literature, that choice itself is circumscribed by the cultural politics of writing in English at a time of global English hegemony.
C. Riley Snorton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677962
- eISBN:
- 9781452948010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677962.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book investigates the down low—a phenomenon in which black men engage in sex with both men and women even though they do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual—and its emergence in the early ...
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This book investigates the down low—a phenomenon in which black men engage in sex with both men and women even though they do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual—and its emergence in the early twenty-first century. It begins with a simple premise: down low might actually characterize black sexual representation, rather than be a reference to a group of black men’s sexual practices. Black sexuality then is figured within a “glass closet,” a space marked by hypervisibility and confinement, spectacle, and speculation. The book analyzes the inception of the down low and its contemporary modes of circulation in popular culture such as news, film, television, gossip blogs, and music, and how they reinforce troubling perceptions of black sexuality. It suggests that both in the psychology of reception and the politics of circulation, the down low reflects contemporary anxieties about the nature of citizenship, national values, and social norms. The book also examines how the down low intertwines blackness with queerness in the popular imagination.Less
This book investigates the down low—a phenomenon in which black men engage in sex with both men and women even though they do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual—and its emergence in the early twenty-first century. It begins with a simple premise: down low might actually characterize black sexual representation, rather than be a reference to a group of black men’s sexual practices. Black sexuality then is figured within a “glass closet,” a space marked by hypervisibility and confinement, spectacle, and speculation. The book analyzes the inception of the down low and its contemporary modes of circulation in popular culture such as news, film, television, gossip blogs, and music, and how they reinforce troubling perceptions of black sexuality. It suggests that both in the psychology of reception and the politics of circulation, the down low reflects contemporary anxieties about the nature of citizenship, national values, and social norms. The book also examines how the down low intertwines blackness with queerness in the popular imagination.
