Who are you? The Negotiation of Identity in Contemporary American “Minority” Literature

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2015-08-31
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en
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Abstract
This thesis is concerned with the construction of identity in contemporary North American novels that are considered to belong to “Minority literature”. Post-colonial theory from Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture will be used in combination with theory from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. Six novels will be analysed through close-reading in conjunction with a theoretical framework based on the works of the aforementioned theorists in order to determine how and what kind of identities are expressed in the novels. The novels featured are Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water (1993), LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker (2001), Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995), Gish Jen’s Typical American (2008), Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), and Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo (2003).
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