Race Mixture in Nineteenth-century U.S. and Spanish American Fictions: Gender, Culture, and Nation BuildingRace mixture has played a formative role in the history of the Americas, from the western expansion of the United States to the political consolidation of emerging nations in Latin America. Debra J. Rosenthal examines nineteenth-century authors in the United States and Spanish America who struggled to give voice to these contemporary dilemmas about interracial sexual and cultural mixing. Rosenthal argues that many literary representations of intimacy or sex took on political dimensions, whether advocating assimilation or miscegenation or defending the status quo. She also examines the degree to which novelists reacted to beliefs about skin differences, blood taboos, incest, desire, or inheritance laws. Rosenthal discusses U.S. authors such as James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Walt Whitman, William Dean Howells, and Lydia Maria Child as well as contemporary novelists from Cuba, Peru, and Ecuador, such as Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, Clorinda Matto de Turner, and Juan Leon Mera. With her multinational approach, Rosenthal explores the significance of racial hybridity to national and literary identity and participates in the wider scholarly effort to broaden critical discussions about America to include the Americas. |
Contents
Acknowledgments ix | 11 |
United States and the Andes | 18 |
CHAPTER 2 | 52 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
abolitionist African American alcohol American Literature antislavery argues Aves sin nido Bamma black women blood Buckner's Carlota cegenation chapter character Child Cooper critics critique Cuba Cuban cultural Cumandá discourse edited Enrique example fiction floral flowers Franklin Evans gender genre Gómez de Avellaneda Harper heroine Hobomok Hope Leslie Howells Howells's Huck hybrid identity Imperative Duty incest Indian-white Indians indigenista interracial Iola Leroy Jackson language language of flowers Latin American literary Lydia Maria Lydia Maria Child Magua marriage marry Matto de Turner miscegenation mixed-race mixing Mohicans Monte's narrative native Native Americans nature novel novelistic Olney plot political portray race mixture racial Ramona rape readers realism representation Republic rhetoric Rhoda Romance romanticism Rosa Sab's Sánchez-Eppler Sedgwick sexual slave slave novels slavery social society Spanish story suggests temperance temperance movement Teresa theme tion Twain U.S. literature Uncle Tom's Cabin United University Press Whitman writing wrote York
References to this book
Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century Holly Berkley Fletcher No preview available - 2008 |