Resistance and Identity in Twenty-First Century Literature and Culture: Voices of the Marginalized is a compendium of reflections on literary texts, politics of literature and culture. The book proffers ruminations on the pivotal role of constructive and positive resistance to reconstruct identities for meaningful human existence. The disciplinary power and dominance coerce the natural body to resist and yearn for freedom. One can establish unique identity by refusing to conform to pressures of society that deform the natural body. Dominant forces and oppressive structures evoke resistance that can range from 'polite demurral' to 'refusal'. Resistance comes from the 'will' that refuses to be controlled and governed. The 'refusal' of the ordinary illuminates ordinary lives/ bodies. Language and literary texts contain essential truths of such human existence. Words and imaginary worlds in literary works reveal truth and suggest possibilities for reconfiguring the order.

Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature and Culture exposes the ways in which colonialism is expressed in the literary and cultural production of the U.S. Southwest, a region that has experienced at least two distinct colonial periods since the sixteenth century. Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez traces how Spanish colonial texts reflect the motivation for colonial domination. She argues that layers of U.S. colonialism complicate how Chicana/o literary scholars think about Chicana/o literary and cultural production. She brings into view the experiences of Chicana/o communities that have long-standing ties to the U.S. Southwest but whose cultural heritage is tied through colonialism to multiple nations, including Spain, Mexico, and the United States. While the legacies of Chicana/o literature simultaneously uphold and challenge colonial constructs, the metaphor of the kaleidoscope makes visible the rupturing of these colonial fragments via political and social urgencies. This book challenges readers to consider the possibilities of shifting our perspectives to reflect on stories told and untold and to advocate for the inclusion of fragmented and peripheral pieces within the kaleidoscope for more complex understandings of individual and collective subjectivities. This book is intended for readers interested in how colonial legacies are performed in the U.S. Southwest, particularly in the context of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Readers will relate to the book’s personal narrative thread that provides a path to understanding fragmented identities.

"Resistance and Identity in Twenty-First Century Literature and Culture: Voices of the Marginalized is a compendium of reflections on literary texts, politics of literature and culture. The book proffers ruminations on the pivotal role of constructive and positive resistance to reconstruct identities for meaningful human existence. The disciplinary power and dominance coerce the natural body to resist and yearn for freedom. One can establish unique identity by refusing to conform to pressures of society that deform the natural body. Dominant forces and oppressive structures evoke resistance that can range from 'polite demurral' to 'refusal'. Resistance comes from the 'will' that refuses to be controlled and governed. The 'refusal' of the ordinary illuminates ordinary lives/ bodies. Language and literary texts contain essential truths of such human existence. Words and imaginary worlds in literary works reveal truth and suggest possibilities for reconfiguring the order"--

Literature for Our Times offers the widest range of essays on present and future directions in postcolonial studies ever gathered together in one volume. Demonstrating the capacity of different approaches and methodologies to ‘live together’ in a spirit of ‘convivial democracy’, these essays range widely across regions, genres, and themes to suggest the many different directions in which the field is moving. Beginning with an engagement with global concerns such as world literatures and cosmopolitanism, translation, diaspora and migrancy, established and emerging critics demonstrate the ways in which postcolonial analysis continues to offer valuable ways of analysing the pressing issues of a globalizing world. The field of Dalit studies is added to funda¬mental interests in gender, race, and indigeneity, while the neglected site of the post¬colonial city, the rising visibility of terrorism, and the continuing importance of trauma and loss are all addressed through an analysis of particular texts. In all of these ap¬proaches, the versatility and adaptability of postcolonial theory is seen at its most energetic. Contributors: Satish Aikant, Jeannette Armstrong, John Clement Ball, Elena Basile, Nela Bureu Ramos, Debjani Ganguly, K.A. Geetha, Henry A. Giroux, John C. Hawley, Sissy Helff, Feroza Jussawalla, Chelva Kanaganayakam, Dorothy Lane, Pamela McCallum, Sam McKegney, Michaela Moura–Koçoğlu, Angelie Multani, Kavita Ivy Nandan, Stephen Ney, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mumia G. Osaaji, Marilyn Adler Papayanis, Summer Pervez, Fred Ribkoff, Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, Anjali Gera Roy, Frank Schulze–Engler, Paul Sharrad, Lincoln Z. Shlensky, K. Satyanarayana, Vandana Saxena, P. Sivakami, Pilar Somacarrera, Susan Spearey, Cheryl Stobie, Robert J.C. Young

This volume addresses the notion of (in)hospitality in the culture, literature, and thought of Chicanx and Latinx in the United States. It underscores those “stranger others” against whom nativist fear and state violence are directed: undocumented migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Critical analyses focus on the topics of immigration and state violence, hospitality in written and visual narratives, and the role of hospitality in the translation of academic and literary works. All essays explore the conditional character of hospitality towards Chicanx and Latinx and its attending myths and discourses. Dwelling on the predicament that individuals and groups face as strangers, unwelcome guests, and unwilling hosts, the essays also explore the ways in which Chicanx and Latinx writers, artists, and filmmakers may or may not challenge the guest-host relationship. The ethical concern that runs through the volume considers material history and the institutional, disciplinary regulation of the uncertainty of hospitality acts as factors determining the narratives about foreign others.

The contributions collected in the second volume of Resistance and the City are devoted to the three markers of identity that cultural studies has recognised as paramount for our understanding of difference, inequality, and solidarity in modern societies: race, class, and gender. These categories, tightly linked to the mechanics of power, domination and subordination, have often played an eminent role in contemporary struggles and clashes in urban space. The confluence of people from diverse ethnic, social, and sexual backgrounds in the city has not only raised their awareness of a variety of life concepts and motivated them to negotiate their own positions, but has also encouraged them to develop strategies of resistance against patterns of social and spatial exclusion. Contributors: Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz, Barbara Korte, Anna Lienen, Gill Plain, Frank Erik Pointner, Katrin Röder, Ingrid von Rosenberg, Mark Schmitt, Ralf Schneider, Christoph Singer, Sabine Smith, Merle Tönnies, Ger Zielinski

The Persistence of Racialization: Literature, Gender, and Ethnicity represents an attempt at unpacking the legacy of modern ideas of race initiated and established during the conquest of the Americas and their current relevance for literary criticism of ethnic writing, also known as minority writing. The book challenges ideas of a post-racial globalized world to question the tendency to devalue ethnic literary writing in general, and ethnic women’s productions in particular, by questioning reductive literary criticism of ethnic writing that perpetuates bias against ethnic writing and its authors. By advocating for a decolonial literary imagination, the book urges literary critics of ethnic writing to consider the complexities of modern race and its enduring impact on contemporary social and cultural narratives. Updated literary analyses of Jewish Argentine, Turkish German, and Chinese American women writers encourage literary critics of ethnic writing to explore alternative transnational frameworks that prioritize equity, diversity, and social justice.