Narratives of Queer Desire: Deserts of the Heart

by M. Breen

Overview

An interdisciplinary project that uses literary analysis, along with personal testimony and the applications of gender theory, as a means for identifying and exploring LGBTQ stories, the book considers queer yearnings for stories other than those conventionally available, that engage and resist norms in literature as well as culture and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230223882
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	08/13/2009
Edition description:	2009
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

MARGARET BREEN is an Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Connecticut, USA, where she teaches courses in LGBT Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Writing Sexuality: Lesbian Novels and the Progress Narrative Love in the Shadows: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate and Beyond Reading for Fantasy in 'Rip Van Winkle' and The Farewell Symphony Remaking Gender Systems of Story: Sexual Violence in Bastard Out of Carolina and The Way the Crow Flies Trussed/Trust/Dressed in Translation Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

Examining texts as various as Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, Jane Rule's Desert of the Heart, Ann Bannon's Women in the Shadows, Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, Edmund White's The Farewell Symphony, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother, Margaret Breen brings to the fore topics as diverse but interrelated as queer agency, same-sex marriage, identity categories, fantasy and gender melancholy, sexual abuse, and translation. Most profoundly, Narratives of Queer Desire eloquently illustrates the power of art to make visible those who are too often erased by heteronormative culture. Breen's book witnesses to the power of literature to engage queer experience and challenge oppression.

- Claude Summers, General Editor, glbtq.com

'Breen (Univ. of Connecticut) accomplishes quite a bit in this relatively brief book. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to answering questions about how reading and writing literature help one engage in social-justice issues...these analyses about the power of storytelling read well alongside contemporary theory, e.g., Judith Butler's Undoing Gender (2004) and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's pivotal The Madwoman in the Attic (CH, Jan'80). The book includes a thorough bibliography and index. Summing Up: Recommended.'

- American Library Association

Breen offers interesting textual analysis of queer resources, in the context of pressing socialconcerns. This coupled with a thoughtful commitment to transformative power of teaching, evidenced by questions and concerns raised by her students, makes for a text that is relevant to a breadth of literary studies, as well as to LGBTQ pedagogies.' - Shamira A. Meghani, This Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory (2011)

From the Publisher