Living in limbo : creating transnational identities in literature
- WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Rachel Caroline Adams (Creator)
- Institution
- Western Carolina University (WCU )
- Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
- Advisor
- Laura Wright
Abstract: This thesis examines the ways transnational identities are created in three works
of fiction: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls
Lost Their Accents (1991), and Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness (2000). I base my
analysis on Stephen Clingman’s articulation of the nature(s) of transnational literature:
that is particularly concerned with boundaries and their navigation; Benedict Anderson’s
concept of the imagined community. Putting these theories into play with each other, I
look at various transnational identities the protagonists of these texts create—how they
must imagine themselves to be members of multiple, sometimes conflicting, nations, and
how they learn to navigate the boundaries between these nations. I also examine which
characters “benefit” from their transnationalism and why, based on their various nexuses
of race, gender, ethnicity, class, and location in temporal and historical space. Antonio
Benítez-Rojo’s theory of the repeating island serves as the backbone for my concluding
thoughts, in which I posit the idea that what distinguishes transnational literature from
other literatures is its distortion and interruption of chronological time. Throughout the
work, I incorporate concepts from outside the world of literary theory in order to
emphasize the fact that, although this thesis deals with literary texts, the identities created
within the texts also exist, and are of primary importance, outside literature.
Living in limbo : creating transnational identities in literature
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Created on 4/1/2014
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2014
- Keywords
- alvarez, anderson, clingman, mda, rhys, transnational
- Subjects
- Rhys, Jean. -- Wide Sargasso Sea
- Alvarez, Julia. -- How the Garcia girls lost their accent
- Mda, Zakes. -- Heart of redness
- Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature
- Literature and transnationalism
- Transnationalism in literature