San Antonio College Library

"What does it mean to be a "mixed-blood," and how has our understanding of this term changed over the last two centuries? What processes have shaped American thinking on racial blending? Why has the figure of the mixed-blood, thought too offensive for polite conversation in the nineteenth century, become a major representative of twentieth-century native consciousness?" "In Injun Joe's Ghost, Harry J. Brown addresses these questions within the interrelated...

"African American culture is often considered expressive, dramatic, and even defiant. In The Sovereignty of Quiet, Kevin Quashie explores quiet as a different kind of expressiveness, one which characterizes a person's desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, and fears. Quiet is a metaphor for the inner life, and as such, enables a more nuanced understanding of Black culture. The book revisits such iconic moments as Tommie Smith and John Carlos's...

This is the first book to describe the intimate relationship between Latin literature and the politics of ancient Rome. Until now, most scholars have viewed classical Latin literature as a product of aesthetic concerns. Thomas Habinek shows, however, that literature was also a cultural practice that emerged from and intervened in the political and social struggles at the heart of the Roman world. Habinek considers major works by such authors as Cato,...

The men in plays such as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or Sam Shepard's True West are often presented as universal, with little attention given to their gender. Instead, their stories are viewed by author and critic as encompassing dynamics relevant to humanity rather than specifically to men. This study explores how masculinity is presented in the works of such leading male playwrights as Shepard, Miller, Eugene O'Neill, David Mamet, David...

Killing Spanish suggests that the doubles, madwomen and other raging characters that populate the pages of contemporary U.S. Latino/a literature allegorize ambivalence about both present American identity and past Caribbean and Latin American origins. The family novels Sandín explores -- ranging from work by the Cuban American Cristina García to the island Puerto Rican Rosario Ferré -- uncover the split between Americanized protagonists and their...

Examining the literary history of racial and national identity in nineteenth-century America, the author argues that writers such as DuBois, Hawthorne, and Whitman used poetic effect to emphasize the distinctiveness of certain groups against a diffuse social landscape.

White Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy, and Classic American Realism brings literary works from the turn of the last century face to face with some of the dilemmas and paradoxes that currently define white liberal identity in the United States. Phillip Barrish develops fresh analytic and pedagogical tools for probing contemporary white liberalism, while also offering new critical insights and classroom approaches to American literary realism. New...

"Sidner Larson's Captured in the Middle embodies the very nature of Indian storytelling, which is circular, drawing upon the personal experiences of the narrator at every turn. Larson teaches about contemporary American Indian literature by describing his own experiences as a child on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana and as a professor at the University of Oregon." "Larson describes Indians today as post-apocalyptic peoples who have already...