Bound in Place

Author(s):  
Stephanie Nohelani Teves

This chapter analyzes what it looks like when aloha comes home from the Hawaiian diaspora. I perform a close reading of a short story in the book, This is Paradise (2012). In the past fifteen years, the number of Kānaka Maoli living outside of Hawaiʻi has increased forty percent, thus creating a division between on-island Kānaka Maoli and those living in the diaspora. This division is exacerbated by a growing cultural nationalist movement that prioritizes land-based forms of Indigeneity. Focusing on the story, “The Old Paniolo Way” to provide a close reading of the quotidian spaces where our cultural performances and interactions support a more inclusive sense of belonging that is not landlocked or tied to touristic visions of Hawaiianness. These spaces are contingent on and maintained through performing aloha and other forms of community recognition. Rather than emphasize an eventual homecoming as the solution to the diaspora, these stories offer an opportunity to animate the kinship networks and Indigenous understandings of place, history, and time that are performed in the diaspora.

Author(s):  
Stephanie Nohelani Teves

“The Afterlife of Princess Kaʻiulani” examines the performance of the memory of one of Hawaiʻi’s most beloved figures, providing a close-reading of a play, a film, and a ghost tour. These sites offer us different understandings of not only the ongoing “aloha” that people experience through the performance of Princess Kaʻiulani’s memory, but ultimately the kaumaha (sadness) that Hawaiians experience because of the potentiality that was not fully realized as a result of Kaʻiulani’s untimely death. The constant performance of Kaʻiulani’s story functions as a form of aloha that reminds Kānaka Maoli of our ongoing connection to our aliʻi (royalty) that is buttressed by a modern thriving cultural nationalist movement.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Xiaojuan Liu

<p>This essay attempts to interpret contemporary American Writer, Annie Proulx’s short story “What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick,” included in <em>Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories II</em>. Applying related historical, sociological, and cultural data and researches, the essay approaches the story by close reading. By exploring the protagonist, Gilbert’s quest for the past values and ethics of the Old West in the contemporary world, this essay presents Proulx’s ambiguous attitude towards those who abides to the old values, despite the sweeping changes. The author argues that Proulxhas shown her views of the oft-discussed issue—nostalgia or progress—in literature, and brought it to a new and profound existential level—a to-be or not-to-be business. At the same time, Proulx has deconstructed American “dime novels” and exposed the delusive nature of this Old West inheritance. Being criticized to be the “new voice”of American Western literature, Proulx has revived the Western fiction and enriched its connotation.</p>


2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
ROCÍO G. DAVIS

The artistic appropriation of place ranks among the central concerns of Asian American writing. Place in literature, a simultaneous geography of space and imagination, has the potential to represent communal formation and preservation as it highlights the identity that binds its members in a shared sense of purpose and a common sense of belonging. For first-generation writers, the portrayal of the land of the past often blends with that of the present, offering a vivid depiction of how immigrants perceive the physical and emotional journey from the geographic and temporal past to the present, as they struggle to establish themselves in the new surroundings. For second-generation Asian Americans, place often acquires another meaning, that of a definition of self in the place of birth, as they shift between visions of their parents' past location and their own cultural differences. Third-generation writers engage a wide spectrum of negotiations with the land that was a protagonists of their growing up, and that of their increasingly complex personal and community history. Consequently, a sense of place becomes one of the most significant elements the Asian American writer can manipulate to condition self-representation and the portrayal of community.


Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Joshua Hudelson

Over the past decade, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has emerged from whisper-quiet corners of the Internet to become a bullhorn of speculation on the human sensorium. Many consider its sonically induced “tingling” to be an entirely novel, and potentially revolutionary, form of human corporeality—one surprisingly effective in combating the maladies of a digitally networked life: insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Complicating these claims, this article argues that ASMR is also neoliberal repackaging of what Marx called the reproduction of labor power. Units of these restorative “tingles” are exchanged for micro-units of attention, which YouTube converts to actual currency based on per-1,000-view equations. True to the claims of Silvia Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati, this reproductive labor remains largely the domain of women. From sweet-voiced receptionists to fawning sales clerks (both of whom are regularly role-played by ASMRtists), sonic labor has long been a force in greasing the gears of capital. That it plays a role in production is a matter that ASMRtists are often at pains to obscure. The second half of this article performs a close reading of what might be considered the very first ASMR film: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Through this film, the exploitative dimensions of ASMR can be contrasted with its potential for creating protected spaces of financial independence and nonnormative corporeal practices.


Author(s):  
Novi Diah Haryanti

Abstract: This study aims to look at narrative patterns in the collection of short stories "Karaban Snow Dance" (TSK). From the fifteen short stories, the researchers took five main stories, namely the Karaban Snow Dance (Tarian Salju Karaban), The Fall of a Leaf (Gugurnya Sehelai Daun),  Canting Kinanti Song (Tembang Canting Kinanti), Jagoan Men Arrived (Lelaki Jagoan Tiba), and Origami Pigeon (Merpati Origami). Of the five short stories, environmental themes and honesty appear most often. The place setting depicted shows the environment that is close to the author or according to the author's origin. The main characters in the four short stories are children, only one short story Male Hero Tiban (Lelaki Jagoan Tiban/LJK) who uses adult takoh as the main character. The child leaders in LJK only appear in the past stories of the main characters. The five short stories do not show a picture of whole parents (father and mother). The warm relationship between mother and child appears clearly, in contrast to the father-child relationship that is almost negligent. The five short stories also represent how children become heroes for their family, friends, and environment.Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat pola narasi pada kumpulan cerpen Tarian Salju Karaban (TSK). Dari limabelas cerpen yang ada, peneliti mengambil lima cerpen utama yakni “Tarian Salju Karaban”, “Gugurnya Sehelai Daun”, “Tembang Canting Kinanti”, “Lelaki Jagoan Tiba”, dan “Merpati Origami”. Kelima cerpen menampilkan tema lingkungan dan kejujuran. Latar tempat yang digambarkan memperlihatkan lingkuangan yang dekat dengan penulis atau sesuai dengan asal usul penulis. Tokoh utama dalam keempat cerpen tersebut ialah anak-anak, hanya satu cerpen “Lelaki Jagoan Tiban” (LJK) yang menggunakan takoh dewasa sebagai tokoh utama. Tokoh anak dalam LJK hanya muncul dalam cerita masa lalu tokoh utama. Kelima cerpen tersebut tidak memperlihatkan gambaran orangtua utuh (ayah dan ibu). Relasi yang hangat antara ibu dan anak muncul dengan jelas, berbeda dengan relasi bapak-anak yang nyaris alpa. Kelima  cerpen tersebut juga merepresentasikan bagaimana anak-anak menjadi pahlawan bagi keluarga, sahabat, dan lingkungannya.  


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Amna Saeed ◽  
Noreen Zainab

This study aims to analyze the short story, The Spell and the Ever Changing Moon (2014) by Rukhsana Ahmad, from the feminist perspective. A close reading of the text reveals that facing everyday challenges and juggling between multiple roles is a common practice for middleclass house wives in Pakistani society. The economic instabilities added with emotional, psychological as well as physical abuse plays a vital role in their oppression and humiliation on regular basis. These roles as assigned to them define their social standing and suffering becomes their destiny. Multiple roles of such women and social expectations outside and inside the house define their way of living. Each and every movement and thought becomes codependent on their social familial roles. Being selfless becomes an obligation and ‘sacrifice’ becomes convention for middle class women who spend their whole lives living under the thumb of their men folk. Moreover, the movement and status of women inside and outside the home is also a major concern addressed in this paper including the concept of home, and its significance in lives of Pakistani women.


2010 ◽  
Vol 38-40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Seiler

Research on Strindberg's short story “Ett halvt ark papper” has ascribed a therapeutic effect to the protagonist's memorialization of the past two years of his life. In this view, the story ends happily, as the narrator tells us. In contrast, the aim of this article is to show the narrator's unreliability. He not only fits together the puzzle pieces of the protagonist's life story into a coherent narration, but he also wants to meet the demands of the genre “Fairytale”, which is the title of the book containing “Ett halvt ark papper”. A coherent narration, however, can only be obtained by neglecting the uncertainties of the protagonist's life. Nobody knows what exactly happened to him. What seems to be his memories is in fact the constructed memorialization of the narrator. Additionally, there are strong textual signs indicating an ironic attitude of the narrator towards H.C. Andersen's fairytales and his “fairytale sound”. Does this mean that it is the narrator's goal to make a fairytale out of the protagonist's tragic fate?


Author(s):  
Timothy Cooper

This article explores embodied encounters with the Sea Empress oil spill of 1996 and their representation in oral narratives. Through a close reading of the personal testimonies collected in the Sea Empress Project archive, I examine the relationship between intense sensory experiences of environmental change and everyday interpretations of the disaster and its legacy. The art­icle first outlines the ways in which this collection of voices reveals sensory memories, embodied affects and narrative choices to be deeply entwined in oral representations of the spill, disclosing a ‘sensory event’ that created a powerful awareness of both environmental surroundings and their relationship to everyday social processes. Then, reading these narratives against-the-grain, I argue that narrators’ accounts tell a paradoxical story of a disaster that most now wish to forget, and reveal an ambivalent legacy of environmental change that is similarly consigned to the past. Finally, I relate this social forgetting of the Sea Empress to the wider history of environmental consciousness in modern Britain.


Author(s):  
Puri Bestari Mardani

Identity is liquid and changeable as time goes by. The change of identity is possible since identity can be formed both from the past and from the future. In the case of cross culture, one’s identity may have certain problems especially in determining cultural identity. Problems in cultural identity have become an interesting topic to be discussed. It was also an interesting topic for writer to color their literature work.The focus of this research is the cultural identity in “Tamu dari Jakarta” (2002) short story by Jujur Prananto. This story brings out an interesting topic about a villager named Ratna who move into a big city (Jakarta). Problem of cultural identity was clearly seen when she visited her hometown (Klaten), the villagers no longer see her as one of them instead the saw her as a visitor or according to the title of this short story, a guest from Jakarta.The form of this research is a textual analysis research using the concept of cultural identity by Stuart Hall. This research shows that the cultural identity of Ratna is constructed through positioned and positioning identity that is shown from the cross-cultural interaction between characters in this story. Furthermore, the proses of being positioned and positioning was based on the stereotype of Jakarta citizen. However this story gave a different view and new insight on the stereotype of Jakarta citizen.   Keywords: cultural identity, cross-cultural, Jakarta citizen


sjesr ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Raham Dil Khan ◽  
Dr. Khan Sardaraz

Previous literature is laden with research on Browning’s dramatic monologues from various perspectives. This paper will compare Browning’s dramatic monologues with Derwesh Durrani’s poetry from socio-literary perspective. Literary theories of analogy and variation will be used to find out similarities and differences in their poetry. Two poems from each poet have been selected for analysis through close reading technique on the model of theories of variation and analogy. Stratified sampling technique was used for taking the representative sample from the data. The findings reveals that Darwesh’s poetry exhibits most of the dramatic features of Browning’s dramatic monologues, but his poetry is more poetic, while Browning’s poetry is more dramatic; Browning invigorates the past, Darwesh recreates the present. In addition, Browning’s poems deals with domestic issues like gender violence, love and marriage, Darwesh’s poetry deals with social issues and patriotism, and contrary to Browning, he stands for women’s rights and sensibilities. This paper suggests further studies purely from socio-cultural perspective of Darwesh’s dramatic monologues, which will contribute to the existing literature on dramatic monologues.


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