african american culture
african american literature
african american perspective
african american writers
ancestral relationships
Category=DNL
Category=JBSL
Category=JHM
community
cultural studies
disciplinary boundaries
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnic demographic studies
ethnic writers
ethnicity
indigenous peoples
minority demographic studies
minority groups
mix blood identity
national boundaries
north american culture
north american society
oral traditions
race
race in north america
racial boundaries
racial identity
resistance
writing culture
Product details
- ISBN 9780520210738
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jan 1998
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The thirteen contributors to "As We Are Now" invite readers to explore with them the untamed territory of race and mixblood identity in North America. A 'mixblood', according to editor W.S. Penn, recognizes that his or her identity comes not from distinct and separable strains of ancestry but from the sum of the tension and interplay of all his or her ancestral relationships. These first-person narratives cross racial, national, and disciplinary boundaries in a refreshingly experimental approach to writing culture. Their authors call on similar but varied cultural and aesthetic traditions - mostly oral - in order to address some aspect of race and identity about which they feel passionate, and all resist the essentialist point of view. Mixblood Native American, Mestizo/a, and African-American writers focus their discussion on the questions indigenous and minority people ask and the way in which they ask them, clearly merging the singular 'I' with the communal 'we'. These are new voices in the dialogue of ethnic writers, and they offer a highly original treatment of an important subject.
W. S. Penn, Professor of English at Michigan State University, is the award-winning author of The Telling of the World (1996), All My Sins Are Relatives (1995), and The Absence of Angels (1994).
