I Could Not Call Her Mother

I Could Not Call Her Mother
Author: Leslie J. Lindenauer
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2013-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0739166824

Stories of the stepmother, the substitute mother, or the “other mother” have infused popular culture for centuries and continue to do so today. She plays a substantial role in our collective imagination, whether we are a part of a step family or not. Despite the fact that the stepmother remains a prevalent figure, both in popular culture and reality, scholars have largely avoided addressing this fraught figure. I Could Not Call Her Mother explores representations of the stepmother in American popular culture from the colonial period to 1960. The archetypal stepmother appears from nineteenth-century romance novels and advice literature to 1930s pulp fiction and film noir. Leslie J. Lindenauer argues that when considered in her historic context, the stepmother serves as a bellwether for changing constructions of motherhood and family. She examines popular culture's role in shaping and reflecting an increasingly normative middle class definition of the ideal mother and family, which by the 1920s became the dominant construct. Lindenauer adds to the rich and growing literature on the history of motherhood. It echoes and is informed by the scholarship that has defined ideal motherhood as a moving target, historically constructed. In so doing, it illuminates the relationship between ideal motherhood and ideal womanhood.

"Toubab La!" Literary Representations of Mixed-Race Characters in the African Diaspora

Author: Ginette Curry
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2009-05-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443810711

The book is an examination of mixed-race characters from writers in the United States, The French and British Caribbean islands (Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and Jamaica), Europe (France and England) and Africa (Burkina Faso, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal). The objective of this study is to capture a realistic view of the literature of the African diaspora as it pertains to biracial and multiracial people. For example, the expression “Toubab La!” as used in the title, is from the Wolof ethnic group in Senegal, West Africa. It means “This is a white person” or “This is a black person who looks or acts white.” It is used as a metaphor to illustrate multiethnic people’s plight in many areas of the African diaspora and how it has evolved. The analysis addresses the different ways multiracial characters look at the world and how the world looks at them. These characters experience historical, economic, sociological and emotional realities in various environments from either white or black people. Their lineage as both white and black determines a new self, making them constantly search for their identity. Each section of the manuscript provides an in-depth analysis of specific authors’ novels that is a window into their true experiences. The first section is a study of mixed race characters in three acclaimed contemporary novels from the United States. James McBride’s The Color of Water (1996), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998) and Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish (2001) reveal the conflicting dynamics of being biracial in today’s American society. The second section is an examination of mixed-race characters in the following French Caribbean novels: Mayotte Capécia’s I Am a Martinican Woman (1948), Michèle Lacrosil’s Cajou (1961) and Ravines du Devant-Jour (1993) by Raphaël Confiant. Section three is about their literary representations in Derek Walcott’s What the Twilight Says (1970), Another life (1973), Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) and Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1995) from the British Caribbean islands. Section four is an in-depth analysis of their plight in novels written by contemporary mulatto writers from Europe such as Marie N’Diaye’s Among Family (1997), Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara (1997). Finally, the last section of the book is a study of novels from West African and South African writers. The analysis of Monique Ilboudo’s Le Mal de Peau (2001), Bessie Head’s A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990) and Abdoulaye Sadji’s Nini, Mulâtresse du Sénégal (1947) concludes this literary journey that takes the readers through several continents at different points in time. Overall, this comprehensive study of mixed-race characters in the literature of the African diaspora reveals not only the old but also the new ways they decline, contest and refuse racial clichés. Likewise, the book unveils how these characters resist, create, reappropriate and revise fixed forms of identity in the African diaspora of the 20th and 21st century. Most importantly, it is also an examination of how the authors themselves deal with the complex reality of a multiracial identity.

Japanese Women

Japanese Women
Author: Takie Sugiyama Lebra
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1985-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780824810252

Japan, a decade behind the United States, is now expressing its awareness of women as a major social issue. This awareness manifests itself in floods of publications, television coverage, the burgeoning of women's studies groups, court rulings interfering with sex discrimination, appointments of women to prominent positions thus far reserved exclusively for men, admission of women to such institutions as the Self Defense Forces, police, athletics, and so on.

Reports

Reports
Author: Alfred Cort Haddon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 500
Release: 1904
Genre: Ethnology
ISBN:

Forms of Speech in Victorian Fiction

Forms of Speech in Victorian Fiction
Author: Raymond Chapman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317896203

Forms of Speech in Victorian Fiction examines how Victorian writers used dialogue in the presentation of characters and the relationships between them, and its contribution to the work as a whole. Quoting over a hundred novels of the period, including all the major authors, many fascinating topics are discussed. The book also looks at the conventions which governed the writing and circulation of fiction, imposing certain restraints on the novelists. It also relates the dialogue used in Victorian fiction to evidence from other sources about the actual speech of the period. This book will be of great value to those studying the social history of the period, as well as literature, and will appeal to the general reader interested in Victorian fiction.

Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits: Volume 5, Sociology, Magic and Religion of the Western Islanders

Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits: Volume 5, Sociology, Magic and Religion of the Western Islanders
Author: A. C. Haddon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2011-02-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0521179890

The fifth in a series compiling the results of an ethnographical research expedition in the Torres Strait, New Guinea, and Borneo. Originally published in 1904, it contains information on the societies and belief structures of the indigenous peoples living in the western islands of the Strait.