Research Catalog

Title

Migrant aesthetics : contemporary fiction, global migration, and the limits of empathy / Glenda R. Carpio.

Author

Carpio, Glenda

Publication

New York : Columbia University Press, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 285 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"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"--

Series Statement

Literature now

Uniform Title

Literature now.

Subject

• 2000-2099
• American fiction > 21st century > History and criticism
• Immigrants in literature
• Emigration and immigration in literature
• Empathy in literature
• American fiction
• Emigration and immigration in literature
• Empathy in literature
• Immigrants in literature

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• Literary criticism
• Literary criticism.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: migrant aesthetics -- Migrant anonymity: stratregic opacity in Dinaw Mengestu and Teju Cole -- Migrant refraction: Aleksandar Hemon's anti auto-biography -- Migrant solidarity: Valeria Luiselli's Echo Canyon -- Carceral migration: Julie Otsuka's internment novels -- Apocalypse and toxicity: Junot Díaz's migrant aesthetics -- Carceral migration II: the Flores declarations and Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying -- "Chinga la Migra"-- Epilogue Karla Villavicencio's The undocumented Americans.

Call Number

JFE 23-3196

ISBN

• 9780231207560
• 0231207565
• 9780231207577
• 0231207573
• 9780231557023 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2022059810

OCLC

1372496695

Author

Carpio, Glenda, author.

Title

Migrant aesthetics : contemporary fiction, global migration, and the limits of empathy / Glenda R. Carpio.

Publisher

New York : Columbia University Press, [2023]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Literature now

Literature now.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

2000-2099

Other Form:

Online version: Carpio, Glenda. Migrant aesthetics New York : Columbia University Press, [2023] 9780231557023 (DLC) 2022059811

Research Call Number

JFE 23-3196