Border Fictions

Subtitle
Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States

"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.

Bio

Claudia Sadowski-Smith is an associate professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.


Praise for this book

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, author of "Between Two Waters"
Cover of "Border Fictions" featuring a blue and beige background with images of a landscape
Date published
Publisher
University of Virginia Press
ISBN
978-0813926780

Get this book

Library catalog link