Identity in Literature

Passing refers to the process whereby a person of one race, gender, and nationality adopts the guise of another.

The search for one's identity is an ancient quest reflected throughout history in stories where human glory and conquest are often layered with great pain and self doubt, meant to help people discover themselves and who they are. Today, this quest is found prevalently in young adult novels, where characters wrestle with modern dilemmas in order to find themselves. This reference resource provides a link for teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults to those novels and how to use them effectively. Educators and therapists explore the literature where common identity issues are addressed in ways intriguing to teens. Using fictional characters, these experts provide guidance on how to encourage adolescents to cope while improving their reading and writing skills.

The unique social history of the early modern period in England marked a crucial moment in the cultural conception and representation of masculinity. This volume explores the various strategies used by 17th- and 18th-century writers to portray the masculine identity. Included are chapters on such authors as Thomas Carew, Andrew Marvell, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson. Together, the expert contributors offer a broad perspective on the social and political dynamics of early modern masculinity. Though incorporating a variety of critical approaches, the contributors all examine the inherent anxiety and problems associated with masculinity and its representation. The chapters demonstrate how significant literary texts of the period worked to provide not only idealized images of the masculine but also contesting ones. Thus the volume shows that the literary representation of masculinity in the early modern period was a dynamic and evolving process.

Examining the literary history of racial and national identity in nineteenth-century America, John Kerkering argues that writers such as DuBois, Hawthorne and Whitman used poetic effect to emphasize the distinctiveness of certain groups against a diffuse social landscape. Kerkering tells the story of how poetry helped define America as a nation before helping to define America into distinct racial categories. He concludes that through a shared reliance on formal literary effects, national and racial identities become related elements of a single literary history.

A skeptical view of the way the mainstream has defined & studied southern literature.

What constitutes "blackness" in American culture? And who gets to define whether or not someone is truly African American? Is a struggling hip-hop artist more "authentic" than a conservative Supreme Court justice? In Authentic Blackness J. Martin Favor looks to the New Negro Movement-also known as the Harlem Renaissance-to explore early challenges to the idea that race is a static category. Authentic Blackness looks at the place of the "folk"-those African Americans "furthest down," in the words of Alain Locke-& how the representation of the folk & the black middle class both spurred the New Negro Movement & became one of its most serious points of contention. Drawing on vernacular theories of African American literature from such figures as Henry Louis Gates Jr. & Houston Baker as well as theorists Judith Butler & Stuart Hall, Favor looks closely at the work of four Harlem Renaissance fictions writers: James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler, & Jean Toomer. Arguing that each of these writers had, at best, an ambiguous relationship to African American folk culture, Favor demonstrates how they each sought to redress the notion of a fixed black identity. Authentic Blackness illustrates how "race" has functioned as a type of performative discourse, a subjectivity that simultaneously builds & conceals its connections with such factors as class, gender, sexuality, & geography. Offering new insight into the work of the Harlem Renaissance as well as concepts of racialized identity, Authentic Blackness will be welcomed by all those involved in the study of African American literature & culture. It will also be of interest to those concerned more generally with issues surrounding constructions of race.

Drawing fascinating comparisons between two literary movements for social justice, Tracy Mishkin explores the link between the Irish Renaissance that began in the 1880s and the African-American movement of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Starting with evidence that Ireland's Abbey Theatre tours of the United States before World War I influenced such African-Americans as Alain Locke and James Weldon Johnson, Mishkin offers the first full-scale discussion of the historical similarities and differences of the two movements. Both rose from the ashes of history -- from people suffering years of oppression during which their native languages were lost or stolen -- to confront issues of language and identity; and both had to combat negative mainstream representation of their people, all the while debating how to create their own literature. Included throughout is the work of women who participated in both movements but who often have been marginalized in their histories.

Going beyond national boundaries, Mishkin takes the study of interracial literary influence across the Atlantic and establishes important parallels between the Harlem and Irish Renaisances.

In this study of vernacular French narrative from the twelfth century through the later Middle Ages, Donald Maddox considers the construction of identity in a wide range of fictions. He focuses on crucial encounters, widespread in medieval literature, in which characters are informed about fundamental aspects of their own circumstances and selfhood. The study offers many new perspectives on the poetic and cultural implications of identity as an imaginary construct during the long formative period of French literature.

What makes John Rechy a Chicano writer? To be Latino, must writing have a touch of 'magical realism'? Can one talk of US Latina/o identity, considering the diversity of the Latina/o experience? Through the analysis of nine recent Latino/a novels, Karen Christian answers these and other questions, thereby adding a fresh, bold voice to the anti-essentialist debate surrounding ethnic and gender identity. Christian melds the theory of 'performativity' with the latest scholarship on ethnicity and ethnic literature to create a framework for viewing identity as a continuous process that cannot be reduced to static categories. Through their narrative 'performances', US Latina/o writers and their characters move among communities and identities in an ongoing challenge to the notion of Latina/o essence. This study is also among the first to examine trends across the spectrum of cultures represented in US Latina/o literature -- from Chicano to Cuban to Puerto Rican to Dominican. This book is essential for any serious student of Latina/o literature and identity.

This work presents a psychological analysis of the process of "coming out" for gay men in America since 1950. Koponen looks at the process as a series of steps in a hero's journey progressing from initial denial and anger to guilt, bargaining, and depression. The stages of acceptance and integration of a gay identity represent the goal of the quest. Providing the common ground on which to analyze the "coming out" process, Koponen uses gay male relationships portrayed in six important American novels--Falconer by John Cheever, City of the Night by John Rechy, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White, Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran, and Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll by Paul Monette. This book not only is literary study, but also is intended to help gay men reflect on their shared lived experiences. Self-help exercises on identifying and examining the stages of coming out are provided throughout the analysis.