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Confluence Narratives

Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas

Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta

Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History and Nation-Making in the Americas explores how a collection of contemporary novels calls attention to the impact of ethnicity on national identities in the Americas. These historical narratives portray the cultural encounters—the conflicts and alliances, peaceful borrowings and violent seizures—that have characterized the history of the American continents since the colonial period. In the second half of the twentieth century, North and South American readers have witnessed a steady output of novels that revisit moments of cultural confluence as a means of revising national histories. Confluence Narratives proposes that these historical novels, published in such places as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, and Canada, make up a key literary genre in the Americas. The genre links the various parts of the hemisphere together through three common historical experiences: colonization, slavery, and immigration. Luciano Tosta demonstrates how numerous texts from the United States, Canada, Spanish America, the Caribbean, and Brazil fall into the genre. The book focuses on four case studies from ethnic groups in the Americas: Amerindians, Afro-descendants, Jewish Americans, and Japanese Americans. Tosta uses the experience of the American nations as a springboard to problematize the concept of the contemporary nation, an identity marked by border-crossings and other experiences of deterritorialization. Based on the exploration of “confluence narratives,” Tosta argues that the “contemporary” nation is not as contemporary as one may think. Informed by postcolonial theory and transnational and ethnic studies, this book offers an important comparative study for and of inter-American literature. Its analysis of the representation of cultural encounters within distinctive national histories underscores the complex nature of ‘otherness’ in the Americas, as well as the inherently transcultural aspect of a trans-continental American identity.

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 314 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-61148-755-8 • Hardback • October 2016 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-61148-756-5 • eBook • October 2016 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General, Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postcolonialism

Confluence Narratives

Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History and Nation-Making in the Americas explores how a collection of contemporary novels calls attention to the impact of ethnicity on national identities in the Americas. These historical narratives portray the cultural encounters—the conflicts and alliances, peaceful borrowings and violent seizures—that have characterized the history of the American continents since the colonial period. In the second half of the twentieth century, North and South American readers have witnessed a steady output of novels that revisit moments of cultural confluence as a means of revising national histories. Confluence Narratives proposes that these historical novels, published in such places as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, and Canada, make up a key literary genre in the Americas. The genre links the various parts of the hemisphere together through three common historical experiences: colonization, slavery, and immigration. Luciano Tosta demonstrates how numerous texts from the United States, Canada, Spanish America, the Caribbean, and Brazil fall into the genre. The book focuses on four case studies from ethnic groups in the Americas: Amerindians, Afro-descendants, Jewish Americans, and Japanese Americans. Tosta uses the experience of the American nations as a springboard to problematize the concept of the contemporary nation, an identity marked by border-crossings and other experiences of deterritorialization. Based on the exploration of “confluence narratives,” Tosta argues that the “contemporary” nation is not as contemporary as one may think. Informed by postcolonial theory and transnational and ethnic studies, this book offers an important comparative study for and of inter-American literature. Its analysis of the representation of cultural encounters within distinctive national histories underscores the complex nature of ‘otherness’ in the Americas, as well as the inherently transcultural aspect of a trans-continental American identity.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 314 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-61148-755-8 • Hardback • October 2016 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-61148-756-5 • eBook • October 2016 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General, Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postcolonialism

Author

Antonio Luciano Tosta is associate professor of Brazilian literature and culture at the University of Kansas.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History and Nation Making in the Americas
Chapter One: The Native American, Hybridity, and Mestiçagem in Luiz Antonio de Assis Brasil’s Breviário das Terras do Brasil and Laura Esquivel’s Malinche
Chapter Two: Escaping the Nation? African American History as (Trans)National History in Luís Fulano de Tal’s A Noite dos Cristais and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada
Chapter Three: Jewish Puzzles: Identity Search, Memory, and History in Moacyr Scliar's A Estranha Nação de Rafael Mendes and Ricardo Feierstein’s Mestizo
Chapter Four: World War II and the Persecution of Identity: Memory, Difference, and the Struggle for Belonging in Jorge J. Okubaro’s O Súdito: (Banzai, Massateru!) and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan
Epilogue: Confluence Narratives and the Future of Inter-American Studies
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Reviews

Tosta’s work represents a valuable contribution to the field of inter-American and interdisciplinary studies, smoothly blending history and literary analysis. The epilogue ends with an open call for more democratic inter-American scholarship by researchers from all over the Americas (including the Caribbean). This is a welcome gesture signaling openness to other views and interpretations of confluence (and other) narratives and is reflective of Tosta’s general approach to these topics. Finally, the bibliography included at the end of the book is a valuable resource for those wishing to begin or further their own inter-American studies. Just as confluence narratives help reshape the history of the Americas, by analyzing important minority groups and identifying others whose contributions need to be studied further (e.g. those of Arab Americans), Tosta’s book expands and reshapes the field of inter-American studies to be increasingly inclusive and reflective of the heterogeneity found throughout the Americas.

— Journal of Lusophone Studies

Confluence Narratives

Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas

Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta

Confluence Narratives

Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas

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