| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
viii, 210 pages ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-203) and index. |
| Summary |
Despite its typically regressive associations with homesickness, nostalgia may also function progressively by imaginatively securing, and mending or repairing the past. Looking at fiction by British and American women writers of different generations and ethnicities, Rubenstein explores tensions between home and exile, insider and outsider, longing and belonging, loss and recovery, mourning and emotional resolution. She argues that nostalgia is a strategy for interrogating not only notions of home, homesickness, and homeland but also cultural or historical dislocation, aging, and moral responsibility. These narratives address a concern in contemporary women's experience: personal and/or cultural displacement are restored-imaginatively, at least-by a vision of healing and emotional repair. |
| Contents |
Yearning and nostalgia: Fiction and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing -- Home is (Mother) Earth: Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver -- Home/lands and contested motherhood: The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver -- Inverted narrative as the path/past home: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez -- Home/sickness and the five stages of grief: Ladder of Years, Anne Tyler -- Hom(e)age to the ancestors: Praisesong for the Widow, Paule Marshall -- Haunted longing and the presence of absence: Jazz, Toni Morrison -- Memory, mourning, and maternal triangulations: Mama Day, Gloria Naylor -- Amazing Grace and the paradox of paradise: Paradise, Toni Morrison -- Fixing the past, re-placing nostalgia. |
| Subject |
Domestic fiction, American -- History and criticism.
|
|
Domestic fiction, American. |
|
Women and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century.
|
|
Women and literature. |
|
English-speaking countries. |
|
History. |
| Chronological Term |
20th century |
| Subject |
American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.
|
|
American fiction -- Women authors. |
|
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
|
|
American fiction. |
|
English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.
|
|
English fiction -- Women authors. |
|
English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
|
|
English fiction. |
|
Domestic fiction, English -- History and criticism.
|
|
Domestic fiction, English. |
|
Nostalgia in literature.
|
|
Nostalgia in literature. |
|
Desire in literature.
|
|
Desire in literature. |
|
Grief in literature.
|
|
Grief in literature. |
|
Home in literature.
|
|
Home in literature. |
| ISBN |
0312238754 |
|
9780312238759 |
|
