Crossing Borders is a volume of interdisciplinary essays on the paradigm of borders in African American literature, multi-ethnic U.S. studies, and South Asian studies. Written by established and mid-career scholars from across the world, the essays employ a variety of approaches to the idea of “border crossings” and represent important contributions to the discourses on modernity, diasporic mobility, populism, migration, exile, sub-nation, trans-nation, as well as the formation of nationalities, communities, and identities. Borders, in these contexts, signify social and national inequities and hierarchies and also the ways to challenge and transgress entrenched barriers sanctioned by habit, custom, and law. The volume also honours and celebrates the life and work of Amritjit Singh as a teacher, mentor, author, scholar, and editor.
Tapan Basu is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Delhi. Tasneem Shahnaaz is associate professor in the Department of English, Sri Aurobindo College, University of Delhi.
Preface ix Introduction xi Tapan Basu and Tasneem Shahnaaz
Part I: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents 1 1 Out of Line: Shifting Border Paradigms in Cooper, Morrison, and Yamashita 3 Silvia Schultermandl 2 Wave or Particle?: Crossing Borders in Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being (2013) 17 Peter Schmidt 3 Translating across the Borders: Sui Sin Far and Other Interethnic/Interstitial Asian American Subjects 31 Martha J. Cutter 4 Dancing with Italians: Chicago’s Italians in Fact, and in the Fiction of Willard Motley 47 Fred Gardaphe
Part II: Nation and Sub-Nation 63 5 Creating Kashmir: Gender, Politics, and Violence in Meena Arora Nayak’s Endless Rain 65 Robin E. Field 6 Drawing the Durand Line: Pakistani Afghans, Borders, and Transnational Insecurity 79 Zubeda Jalalzai 7 Teaching Giovanni’s Room in the Shadow of the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict: Denaturalizing Privilege 95 Catherine Rottenberg
Part III: Diaspora and Trans-Nation 107 8 Diasporic Subjectivity: Dhan Gopal Mukerji’s Caste and Outcast and Sadhu Singh Dhami’s Maluka 109 Nalini Iyer 9 A Partition without Borders: Diasporic Readings of Clear Light of Day and Train to Pakistan 119 Rahul K. Gairola 10 Caste, Race, and Intellectual History: Notes on a Singular Modernity 135 Auritro Majumder
Part IV: Gendered Identities 147 11 Jessie Fauset and the Historiography of the Harlem Renaissance 149 Cheryl A. Wall 12 Space and the Shape of a Life: Placing Nella Larsen 165 Thadious M. Davis 13 The Sexual Commodities, Racial Economies, and Critical Oversights of Felice Swados’s House of Fury 183 Ayesha K. Hardison
Part V: Art: Between the Popular and the Populist 197 14 Langston Hughes and the Challenges of Populist Art 199 Arnold Rampersad 15 Orality, History, and Narration: The Aesthetics of Listening 215 Jasbir Jain 16 Romare Bearden’s Li’l Dan the Drummer Boy: Coloring a Story of the Civil War 225 Robert B. Stepto
Part VI: Journeys across Art and Life 233 17 “Heritage” in America: A Literary Stroll 235 Werner Sollors 18 What Is Ralph Ellison All About?: A Retrospective View 251 Charles Johnson Contents vii 19 Writing across Borders: Race and Gender in Elleke Boehmer’s Fiction 259 Lynda Ng 20 A Native Son Abroad: A Conversation with Amritjit Singh 269 Nibir K. Ghosh
Epilogue: Amritjit Singh: Reflections and Stories 285 Rajiva Verma, Ved Prakash, Houston A. Baker, Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, K. D. Verma, David Ray, Judy Ray, Meena Alexander, J. N. Sharma, Sachidananda Mohanty, Pradyumna S. Chauhan, Malashri Lal, Sudhi Rajiv, Tapan Basu, Daniel M. Scott, Joseph A. Conforti, Richard Olmstead, Barbara A. Silliman, Zubeda Jalalzai, Gert Buelens, Robert Elliot Fox, Bruce Dick, C. Lok Chua, Wendy Barker, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, John C. Hawley, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Samina Najmi, Rajini Srikanth, Nita N. Kumar, Altaf Ullah Khan, Marsha L. Dutton, Vladimir Marchenkov, Richard A. Courage, Heba Sharobeem and Ira Dworkin
Index 331 About the Editors and Contributors 347