Search

A literary criticism of the novel "The Lowland" by Bengali American author Jhumpa Lahiri is presented. It provides a biographical sketch of the author including her education and status as immigrant. An overview of the novel's plot, set in India, is given and it considers themes of identity, culture, and belonging.

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go narrates a dystopic world that draws attention to the construction of identity, existence as human beings and non-humans, and alienation. The "clones" in the novel portray the problematic relationship between identity and body. Significantly, the fragmentation of the bodies of the "clones" results in the disruption of their identities. This article explores corporeality and fragmentation in Never Let Me Go by considering the literally and metaphorically fragmented bodies of the characters. The "clones" in the novel experience alienation from their own bodies and from the outer world. The fragmentation or the fear of fragmentation of the bodies of the "clones" exposes the idea that their identities are formed by their descriptions as "freaks," as incomplete identities and suffering bodies. This study analyzes the fragmentation of the body in Never Let Me Go in accordance with the idea that the subject is alienated from his/her "self" which crystalizes the lack in identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of maps in the works of Czech author- illustrator Peter Sís in order to consider the role that cartography plays in the construction of four of his biographical picturebooks: Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus (2003/1991), Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei (1996), The Tree of Life: A Book Depicting the Life of Charles Darwin, Naturalist, Geologist and Thinker (2003), and The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint- Exupéry (2013). The profusion of maps found in Sís's biographical picturebooks expresses an understanding that the exploration of identity is intimately linked with the exploration of the spaces in which that identity is formed. The maps represent three basic functions for Sís: first, he uses maps to situate the reader in a specific time and place; second, maps are elements that initiate adventure; and third, the profusion of maps, combined with other textual elements, raises a question that runs through all of Sís's work regarding the limits of representations of reality. The article illustrates the three functions by presenting a walk through the pages of the four chosen picturebooks, describing and analysing the different types of maps that Sís uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay analyses Graham Swift's Waterland and shows that history and identity are subject to a process of reconstruction within stories which evince their author's power to build on the past based on his vision and cultural experience. We associate the process of recreating the world of the past through stories with the process of recreating a new world through siltation. The same as silt develops land and a new world on the already existing pieces of land reclaimed from water, stories reconstruct history and the past. Both silt and stories reconstruct the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-positivist realism contends that there is a need to theorize not only identity but also agency. Identity is hence understood from the dialogic perspective of engaging the world from the vantage point ofagency, facilitating wholeness, or the dialogic interaction between selfand other, past and present. The search for wholeness with the aid of re-memory, double consciousness and agency becomes the trigger for an active expression of Black women's subjectivity throughout the African diaspora. Women's subjectivity consists of giving emphasis to the importance of women being the owners of their destinies when they engage in the building of their identities, which are shaped by the interaction of time, community and experience, claiming that identity is performative, indeterminant and multiple. Sapphire's novel Push will be analyzed as a text that counteracts the politics of silence, transforming fear and difference into speech and telling, adding to the liberatory discourses of contemporary Black women writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation" by M. T. Anderson is presented. It explores the complex ongoing negotiation of the protagonist's identity and the role of music and musical expression in authoring the subaltern self. It examines the symbolic significance of the protagonist in terms of the ontological notions of self. It also discusses the theme of observation.

The article discusses research on young adult books on bullying. The author presents information on the relationship between bibliotherapy and literacy development, the themes in books on bullying, and the literary quality of adolescent fiction books that focus on bullying. Themes include emerging sexuality, tension at home, and a change in status, identity or place. The study reviews books such as "Black Swan Green," by David Mitchell, "This is What I Did," by Ann Dee Ellis, and "Twisted," by Leslie Halse Anderson.

In his article "Imperialist Nostalgia in Masters's To the Coral Strand" Mehmet Fikret Arargüç discusses nostalgia as a resource of identity formation. Arargüç argues that imperialist nostalgia is no innocent emotional attachment to the past; rather, it is an adaptation to changed circumstances and its discursive practices (i.e., eulogizing) evade responsibility. In addition to practices to alleviate or absolve repressed guilt about the past, they often relate to discourses of power and regret that the past is no more. This type of nostalgia is another neo-imperialist form of exploitation by (ab)using or generating fluid, dynamic, and ever-evolving identities. Arargüç suggests that in his autobiographical To the Coral Strand Masters attempts to cope with loss of status and identity following the end of British rule of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pepetela's novel Lueji consists of two interweaving stories: firstly, how Queen Lueji founded an empire in Lunda some 400 years ago and secondly how a ballerina, Lu, recreates the tale of Lueji on the stage in modern-day Luanda. This paper explores how Pepetela, building on various nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts of oral renditions of the myth of Lueji, attempts to recreate in the novel that element of performance that is so characteristic of orature. By linking the past and the present Pepetela builds a unifying tale of the origin for the new Angolan nation and, assisted by the shared experience of performance, helps mobilize a sense of Angolan national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented of the 1967 semi-autobiographical book "Down These Mean Streets," by Piri Thomas. The book recounts the violence, stereotypes, and social problems that Thomas dealt with while living in New York City. The issue of race is a frequent theme in the book, particularly African Americans and black Puerto Ricans who can "pass" for Caucasian people. Other topics include Thomas' transformation through the book, the historian Michel Foucault, and personal identity.

The aim of this study is to examine the similarity of character constitution in Kleist's short story and Emily Brontë's novel, which seems to work in a diversity of identity creating attempts supplied by the characters themselves, the multiplicity of narrative voices as well as by the reader. The exploration of the identity quest is based on the analysis of the rhetorical ways of creating an origin for the foundlings by the use of nature analogies, through moral discourse and social positioning. The foundling figures in both narratives are closely connected with corresponding female characters and their identification process is interrelated. I will argue that in both texts, due to the complementary nature of individual figures and the complexity of the narrative design, identification attempts fail on all levels, thus character constitution itself is necessarily frustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]