Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction

by Grazyna Kozaczka, Grazyna J. Kozaczka

Overview

Winner of the 2019 Oskar Halecki Prize (Polish American Historical Association)

Though often unnoticed by scholars of literature and history, Polish American women have for decades been fighting back against the patriarchy they encountered in America and the patriarchy that followed them from Poland. Through close readings of several Polish American and Polish Canadian novels and short stories published over the last seven decades, Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction traces the evolution of this struggle and women’s efforts to construct gendered and classed ethnicity.

Focusing predominantly on work by North American born and immigrant authors that represents the Polish American Catholic tradition, Grażyna J. Kozaczka puts texts in conversation with other American ethnic literatures. She positions ethnic gender construction and performance at an intersection of social class, race, and sex. She explores the marginalization of ethnic female characters in terms of migration studies, theories of whiteness, and the history of feminist discourse. Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction tells the complex story of how Polish American women writers have shown a strong awareness of their oppression and sought empowerment through resistive and transgressive behaviors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821423394
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Series:	Polish and Polish American Studies
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Grażyna J. Kozaczka is a distinguished professor of English and the director of the All College Honors Program at Cazenovia College. She is the author of William Dean Howells and John Cheever: The Failure of the American Dream and numerous articles on Polish American literature. She has also authored Old World Stitchery, and articles on Polish folk dress and adornment.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Series Editor's Preface xiii

Preface and Acknowledgments xv

Guide to Pronunciation xix

Introduction. Polish American Women: A Cultural and Literary Construct 1

1 Faces of Resistance: Monica Krawczyk's Immigrant Women 26

2 At Midcentury: Polish Americans Writing Their Identity 42

3 Suzanne Strempek Shea's Gendered Ethnicity in the 1970s and 1980s 59

4 Leslie Pietrzyk and Ellen Slezak Constructing Ethnic Motherhood 81

5 Tragic Motherhood in Danuta Mostwin's "Jocasta" 96

6 Transgressive Sexuality in Polish American Fiction of the Last Twenty-Five Years 111

7 (Im)migrant Homelands in the Early Twenty-First Century 132

8 Experiments in Ethnicity: The "Solidarity" 1.5 Generation 154

9 Fifty Years of Girling: Models of Polish American Femininity in Young Adult Literature 173

Epilogue 204

Notes 209

Bibliography 243

Index 263