Contested Identities in American Writing

Drawing upon Transnational American Studies, the book explores contested identities in literary and life writing from the US, the Caribbean, and Canada. It is important to consider how identity dynamics articulate (or not) with the macropolitical processes that the Americas have been experiencing, in which contexts of increasing crisis, politics of exclusion, and polarization are crossed. As the book argues, identities in conflict are the propelling force behind writers' ambitions to create narratives of cultural critique and redemption. Contested identities, and the way they have been represented in different periods of North American literary production are looked at through the lenses of gender, race, class, property, migration, diaspora, disability, and practices of comparing.

The key audiences for the book include scholars and students of Global Studies, Transnational American Studies, Identity Studies, Cultural and Literary Studies.