Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States

by Claudia Sadowski-Smith

Overview

Border Fictions offers the first comparative analysis of multiethnic and transnational cultural representations about the United States' borders with Mexico and Canada. Blending textual analysis with theories of globalization and empire, Claudia Sadowski-Smith forges a new model of inter-American studies.

Border Fictions places into dialogue a variety of hemispheric perspectives from Chicana/o, Asian American, American Indian, Latin American, and Canadian studies. Each chapter examines fiction that ranges widely, from celebrated authors such as Carlos Fuentes, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Alberto Ríos to writers whose contributions to border literature have not yet been fully appreciated, including Karen Tei Yamashita, Thomas King, Janette Turner Hospital, and emerging Chicana/o writers of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Proposing a diverse and geographically expansive view of border and inter-American studies, Border Fictions links the work of these and numerous other authors to civil rights movements, environmental justice activism, struggles for land and border-crossing rights, as well as to anti-imperialist forms of nationalism in the United States’ neighboring countries. The book forces us to take into account the ways in which shifts in the nature of global relations affect literary production, especially in its hemispheric manifestations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813926780
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	02/01/2008
Series:	New World Studies
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Claudia Sadowski-Smith is Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University and the editor of Globalization on the Line: Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: The Diverse Spaces of Border Fictions     1
Chicana/o Writing and the Mexico-U.S. Border     21
Asian Border Crossings     46
Native Border Theory     72
The View from the South     98
A Border Like No Other     119
Conclusion: Border Fictions and Inter-American Studies     139
Notes     145
Bibliography     163
Index     183

What People are Saying About This

Silvia SpittaDartmouth College

Sadowski-Smith is at the cutting edge of border studies, and her Border Fictions promises to be a valuable and important contribution to the current discussion regarding both ethnicities and borders and the impact of globalization and transnationalism on U.S. borders..... To date there is no such book on the market.

Silvia Spitta

Sadowski-Smith is at the cutting edge of border studies, and her Border Fictions promises to be a valuable and important contribution to the current discussion regarding both ethnicities and borders and the impact of globalization and transnationalism on U.S. borders..... To date there is no such book on the market. (Silvia Spitta, Dartmouth College, author of Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America)

Editorial Reviews

Sadowski-Smith is at the cutting edge of border studies, and her Border Fictions promises to be a valuable and important contribution to the current discussion regarding both ethnicities and borders and the impact of globalization and transnationalism on U.S. borders..... To date there is no such book on the market.

Silvia Spitta

Sadowski-Smith is at the cutting edge of border studies, and her Border Fictions promises to be a valuable and important contribution to the current discussion regarding both ethnicities and borders and the impact of globalization and transnationalism on U.S. borders..... To date there is no such book on the market.

Silvia SpittaDartmouth College

"Sadowski-Smith is at the cutting edge of border studies, and her Border Fictions promises to be a valuable and important contribution to the current discussion regarding both ethnicities and borders and the impact of globalization and transnationalism on U.S. borders..... To date there is no such book on the market. "—Silvia SpittaDartmouth College, author of Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America

From the Publisher