The Romance of Authenticity: The Cultural Politics of Regional and Ethnic Literatures

by Frederick J. Karem

Overview

To what extent has the growing popular demand for a vicarious experience of other cultures fueled the expectation that the most important task for regional and ethnic writers is to capture and convey authentic cultural material to their readers? In The Romance of Authenticity, Jeff Karem argues that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions that authenticity should be prized as a goal of regional and ethnic literatures, it is in fact a dangerously restrictive category of literary judgment. He draws on a large body of archival evidence to show how intense political and economic interests have determined what literary representations are deemed authentic, not only constraining what such writers can publish but also limiting the ways in which their works are interpreted.

The author specifically discusses the work of William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Ernest Gaines, Rolando Hinojosa, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Exploring these writers’ different responses to the expectation that they act as cultural representatives of the Southern, Southwestern, African American, Latino, or Native American experience, Karem finds that some refuse that role and others embrace it. The Romance of Authenticity concludes that despite the celebration of hybridity in contemporary theories of identity, the politics of cultural authenticity in publishing and criticism produce precisely the opposite effect, reducing regional and ethnic writers to exotic objects of desire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813922553
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	02/25/2004
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeff Karem is Assistant Professor of English at Cleveland State University.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Introduction	1
1	The Boundaries of Regionalism in the Career of William Faulkner	17
2	Richard Wright's Reception: From Regionalist to Racial Representative	61
3	Searching for Heroes: Ernest Gaines and His Readers	95
4	The Permeable Borders of Rolando Hinojosa's Valley	127
5	Representing the Southwest? The Fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko	159
	Epilogue: Resisting Representation	205
	Notes	213
	Index	239

What People are Saying About This

""With considerable literary and historical scope and with original archival research, The Romance of Authenticity is a valuable contribution to current scholarly debates regarding U.S. regionalism, multicultural literature, and reception studies. Karem challenges liberal multiculturalism for an 'inclusiveness' that often depends on narrow 'representativeness' that the ethnic author explicitly rejects, and is particularly effective in showing how such representativeness often depends on misreadings of ethnic authors' intentions." -- John Carlos Rowe, author of The New American Studies

John Carlos Rowe

"With considerable literary and historical scope and with original archival research, The Romance of Authenticity is a valuable contribution to current scholarly debates regarding U.S. regionalism, multicultural literature, and reception studies. Karem challenges liberal multiculturalism for an ‘inclusiveness’ that often depends on narrow ‘representativeness’ that the ethnic author explicitly rejects, and is particularly effective in showing how such representativeness often depends on misreadings of ethnic authors’ intentions.

Editorial Reviews

"With considerable literary and historical scope and with original archival research, The Romance of Authenticity is a valuable contribution to current scholarly debates regarding U.S. regionalism, multicultural literature, and reception studies. Karem challenges liberal multiculturalism for an ‘inclusiveness’ that often depends on narrow ‘representativeness’ that the ethnic author explicitly rejects, and is particularly effective in showing how such representativeness often depends on misreadings of ethnic authors’ intentions.

John Carlos Rowe

"With considerable literary and historical scope and with original archival research, The Romance of Authenticity is a valuable contribution to current scholarly debates regarding U.S. regionalism, multicultural literature, and reception studies. Karem challenges liberal multiculturalism for an ‘inclusiveness’ that often depends on narrow ‘representativeness’ that the ethnic author explicitly rejects, and is particularly effective in showing how such representativeness often depends on misreadings of ethnic authors’ intentions. "—John Carlos Rowe, author of The New American Studies

From the Publisher