A Disruption of the National Identity in the Brazilian-American Novel Samba Dreamers / Ruptura com a identidade nacional no romance brasileiro- estadunidense Samba Dreamers

The intensification of anti-immigration policies and discourses in the United States during Donald Trump’s administration reveals a reaction against the foreigner characterized, as Jacques Derrida proposes, by the widening of ethnocentric and xenophobic circles in face of the fluxes of capital, people, and information in contemporaneity. In this context, it is part of the critic’s responsibilities to address the link between literature and national identity, while attesting to the way literature transgresses the borders imposed upon it. This is the stance this article intends to take as it analyses Kathleen de Azevedo’s 2006 Brazilian-American novel Samba Dreamers. For this purpose, I depart from a discussion about the intrinsic relationship between hospitality and hostility to the foreigner, as well as from the possibility of literature of saying everything (tout dire), to argue that this novel objects to stable notions of nation, gestures towards a displacement of identity beyond the constraints of the state, and invites a post-national mode of thinking.Keywords: immigrant writing; post-nationalist literature; Brazilian-American literature; national identity.Resumo: A intensificação de políticas e discursos anti-imigração nos Estados Unidos durante a presidência de Donald Trump revela uma reação ao estrangeiro caracterizada, como coloca Jacques Derrida, pelo espessamento dos círculos etnocêntricos e xenofóbicos diante dos fluxos contemporâneos de capital, pessoas e informações. Nesse contexto, é papel do crítico abordar a relação entre literatura e identidade nacional, atentando para as formas pelas quais a literatura transpõe as fronteiras que lhe são impostas. Este é o posicionamento que se pretende ter aqui, enquanto se analisa o romance brasileiro-estadunidense Samba Dreamers, de Kathleen de Azevedo (2006). Para isso, parte-se de uma discussão sobre a relação intrínseca entre hospitalidade e hostilidade ao estrangeiro, assim como da possibilidade da literatura de dizer tudo (tout dire), para propor que o romance se opõe a noções estáveis de nação, articula o deslocamento da ideia de identidade para além dos limites geopolíticos do estado e convida a um pensamento pós-nacional.Palavras-chave: escrita de imigrantes; literatura pós-nacional; literatura brasileiro-estadunidense; identidade nacional.

Rereading Empire, Rethinking History: Rehabilitation of the Vietcong in Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge

Throughits reading of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, credited as the first Vietnamese American novel, this article seeksto investigate the discourse of reconciliation or refugee settlement in the context of the changing US master narratives from Empire to Cold War 2.0. Itarguesthat Cao’s novel in its effort to register a South Vietnamese perspective reorients modern Vietnamese experiences in relation to the US sense of democracy and freedom and in the process challenges what Donald Pease calls the state fantasy of American exceptionalism in the US military intervention in Vietnam. What Cao’s novel achieves is to blur the boundary between nationalism and communism in its representation of the Vietnamese struggle for independence in its early stage and to humanize and rehabilitate the Vietcong soldier as a possibly assimilable “us” rather than as simply “them” in the realm of the other.

Ralph Ellison in Context

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the second-most assigned American novel since 1945 and is one of the most enduring. It is studied by many thousands of high school and college students every year and has been since the 1950s. His landmark essays, with their blend of personal history and cultural theory, have been extraordinarily influential. Ralph Ellison in Context includes authoritative chapters summing up longstanding conversations, while offering groundbreaking essays on a variety of topics not yet covered in the copious critical and biographical literature. It provides fresh perspectives on some of the most important people and places in Ellison's life, and explores where his work and biography cross paths with some of the pressing topics of his time. It includes chapters on Ellison's literary influences and offers a definitive overview of his early writings. It also provides an overview of Ellison's reception and reputation from his death in 1994 through 2020.

Spain in the Making and Reception of García Márquez’s Works

Gabriel García Márquez is one of the most beloved and read writers of the last century in Spain. Yet his early literary works went almost unnoticed for more than a decade among Spanish publishers, critics, and readers. The success of One Hundred Years of Solitude and subsequent works transformed him into a popular bestselling writer and iconic figure in that country. Using little-known and new sources, including documents from contemporary reviews and readers’ reactions as well as the author’s archives, this article studies the reception of García Márquez’s works and his rise to stardom in Spain. Key to the successful response to his oeuvre were (1) the literary education of the author, which allowed him to develop a writing style with appeal to Spanish audiences; (2) the diffusion and consecration of the New Latin American Novel (aka Boom novel) during a crisis in Peninsular fiction; (3) the modernization of Spain’s book industry, which benefited the promotion of García Márquez’s works among the rising middle classes; and (4) the writer’s involvement in the country’s cultural and political affairs during its transition to and consolidation of democratic rule. The intersection of these threads resulted in the appropriation of García Márquez as a Spanish writer and his transformation into one of Spain’s cultural icons. This article builds on analytical tools developed by the fields of cultural sociology and the history of reading practices.