TY  - GEN
T1  - Race Characters
A1  - Rana, Swati
LA  - eng
PB  - The University of North Carolina Press
YR  - 2023
UL  - https://ebooks.jgu.edu.in/Record/doab-20.500.12854-121692
AB  - A vexed figure inhabits U.S. literature and culture: the visibly racialized immigrant who disavows minority identity and embraces the American dream. Such figures are potent and controversial, for they promise to expiate racial violence and perpetuate an exceptionalist ideal of America. Swati Rana grapples with these figures, building on studies of literary character and racial form. Rana offers a new way to view characterization through racialization that creates a fuller social reading of race. Situated in a nascent period of ethnic identification from 1900 to 1960, this book focuses on immigrant writers who do not fit neatly into a resistance-based model of ethnic literature. Writings by Paule Marshall, Ameen Rihani, Dalip Singh Saund, Jose Garcia Villa, and Jose Antonio Villarreal symbolize different aspects of the American dream, from individualism to imperialism, assimilation to upward mobility. The dynamics of characterization are also those of contestation, Rana argues. Analyzing the interrelation of persona and personhood, Race Characters presents an original method of comparison, revealing how the protagonist of the American dream is socially constrained and structurally driven.
SN  - 9798890860507
SN  - 9781469659497
SN  - 9781469659466
SN  - 9781469659473
KW  - race
KW  - character
KW  - ethnic literature
KW  - American dream
KW  - 1900 to 1960
KW  - immigration
KW  - racial form
KW  - comparative
KW  - Arab American
KW  - Asian American
KW  - Black
KW  - Chicano
KW  - assimilation
KW  - model minority
KW  - authorial character
KW  - Marshall, Paule
KW  - Rihani, Ameen
KW  - Saund, Dalip Singh
KW  - Villa, José Garcia
KW  - Villarreal, José Antonio
KW  - comparative ethnic literature
KW  - early twentieth-century immigrant literature
KW  - diaspora
KW  - ethnicity
KW  - African American
KW  - Afro-Caribbean
KW  - Chicana/o
KW  - Filipina/o
KW  - South Asian
KW  - American exceptionalism
KW  - individualism
KW  - upward mobility
KW  - American character
KW  - archetype
KW  - autobiography
KW  - autobiographical fiction
KW  - fictive character
KW  - literary character
KW  - personhood
KW  - social character
KW  - burden of representation
KW  - literary formalism
KW  - literary method
KW  - character criticism
ER  -