Annotated bibliography example

Lucia Lorenzi
English 494: Honours Program
3 December 2007

Works Consulted

Primary Texts

Badami, Anita Rau. Tamarind Mem. Toronto: Vintage, 1996.  Print.

Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Mistress of Spices. New York: Anchor, 1997.  Print.

Espinet, Ramabai. The Swinging Bridge. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2003.  Print.

Mukherjee, Bharati. The Tree Bride. New York: Hyperion, 2004.  Print.

Secondary Texts

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. 2^nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

In their introduction, Ashcroft et al. pose the following question: “Since all the post-colonial societies we discuss have achieved political independence, why is the issue of coloniality still relevant at all?” (6). As their text reveals, vestiges of hegemony continue to manifest themselves in various cultural institutions, of which literature has played a central role: “literature was made central to the cultural enterprise of Empire as the monarchy was to its political formation” (3). I am primarily interested in the historical account of literature’s relationship to colonialism through form (e.g. travel writings) and manufacture (e.g. ruling classes owned the means of production and distribution for literary works). This evidence has been particularly useful to my research, as it helps to contextualize the current state of literary hegemony: although the current socio-economic structure allows for the inclusion of post-colonial texts—even those which offer scathing condemnations of the British Empire—the legacy of colonialism continues to appear in the marketing strategies applied to such works, a strategy that may be defined as “post-colonial-colonialism.” In addition, I will pay particular attention to the second chapter of the text, entitled “Re-placing Language: Textual Strategies in Postcolonial Writing,” in which the authors describe particular linguistic techniques which either add to or detract from the postcolonial projects undertaken by many works of fiction: since part of my project will focus on the textual marketing techniques (i.e. book jacket blurbs), the language involved in postcolonial literature is an important area of study.

Clayton, Jay. “The Narrative Turn in Recent Minority Fiction.” American Literary History 2 (1990): 375-93. JSTOR. Web. 19 Sept. 1007.

Clayton points out that although the narrative turn towards storytelling is often seen as a return to “old-fashioned values” (378), “the rich mixture of traditional narrative forms and contemporary political concerns found in minority writings […] has made this period one of the most exciting of the century for writing” (379). Also pertinent are Clayton’s discussions of several theories of narrative: Michel de Certeau’s four ways in which stories help people “escape disciplinary control” (381); Jean-Michel Lyotard’s theory of “narrative knowledge” [knowledge which is not necessarily connected to verifiable statements about reality] (383-5); and Michel Foucault’s discussions of discourses of power (380). This article provides significant insight into studying my primary texts from a position where literary form is equally as telling as content.

Crane, Susan A. “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory.” The American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1372-85. JSTOR. Web. 2 Oct. 2007.

Crane’s article suggests that the narrative of history is regularly expressed in terms of collective understanding: for example, the Holocaust is often remembered as a form of collective suffering, rather than a collection of individual traumas. Given Crane’s assertion that “each individual, as a member of many collectives, holds and expresses personal memories of historical significance as lived experience,” this article is useful in the categorization of my primary texts. While all four novels are all written by members of the female South Asian diaspora, it is importance that I resist approaching them as a collective, and instead deal with them as four highly individual narratives from four unique social, cultural, and historical spheres (some of which may overlap). While I agree with Crane’s project, and the compelling evidence she provides for a history of compilation rather than collectivity, the logistics of her argument simply cannot function within the current state of capitalism: although there are current trends towards pseudo-individuality, the desire to turn a profit means that the distribution of an individual’s experience will be mitigated and critically assessed. – more?

Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Interview with Robbie Clipper Sethi. Little India. Apr. 1999. Web.19 July 2004,

Sethi’s interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni provides significant insight not only into the intent behind novels such as The Mistress of Spices, but also the intended audience of such works. Divakaruni contends that “it’s nice to create a community of [South Asian] writers that help each other […] I think it’s important for us as a smaller community within a larger community” (3). Interestingly enough, her novel has achieved significant commercial success, and not only within the South Asian community. Given Divakaruni’s open articulation that her intent to create a positive and flourishing community of South Asian writers, this interview provides a positive support for my thesis.

Dwivedi, Kedar Nath and Damian Gardner. “Theoretical Perspectives and Clinical Approaches.” The Therapeutic Use of Stories. Ed. Kedar Nath Dwivedi. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Nath and Gardner’s psychotherapeutic investigations into the human desire to tell stories provide a scientific resource with which to analyze both the metafictive and fictive reasons for the creation of narrative. This text provides not only historical evidence for the therapeutic nature of stories (i.e. the creations of myths, folklore, etc.), but also. Since the science of psychology is often highly subjective, I will not rely heavily on this text to provide “empirical” confirmations of my thesis. Nath and Gardner caution that “the use of story and metaphor is open to misuse and abuse […] any approach which encourages creativity and intuition needs to be located safely in a context of experience, through thorough assessment and appropriate supervision and training” (37). As such, I will not employ this text to conduct thorough evaluations of my novels, nor will I explicitly contend that the sole purpose of these novels is to provide a therapeutic outlet for either the author or the audience (rather than an aesthetic experience). However, through an analysis of certain textual evidence in my novels, I will be able to assert that catharsis (whether individual, cultural, gendered, historical, etc.) provides a strong support for the form and function of my primary texts.

Espinet, Ramabai. “The Invisible Woman in West Indian Fiction.” World Literature Written in English 29 (1989): 116-26.  Print.

Ramabai Espinet contends that due to the heavily prescribed social roles for females growing up in the West Indies, they have been—until recently—unable to make their stories visible through the platform of literature, a medium which has been extensively explored by notable male West Indian authors, such as V.S. Naipaul. Espinet’s use of the word “invisible” is particularly important, as it does not imply the absence of the subject, but the inability of the subject to realize their subjectivity as part of a larger cultural group. The literary invisibility of Indian women, Espinet contends, is largely tied to the concept of “the gaze,” which she suggests functions conversely to the traditional Western male gaze: rather, Indian society “dictates that it is against custom to actually see Indian women” (119). Espinet’s article thus poses the following question: if West Indian women become visible within the realm of fiction, does their work risk being exposed to another oppressive gaze (one which commodifies their visibility and tailors exactly how much/what can be visible, and at what time)?

Ezell, Margaret J. M. Writing Women’s Literary History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U,

1993.

* Still waiting for access to this text.

Fehr, Ann, Ingeborg Hoesterey, and Maria Tatar, eds. Neverending Stories: Toward a Critical Narratology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992. Print.

This anthology explores the study of narratology and the historical and theoretical implications of the practice. In the introduction to the text, Ingeborg Hoesterey acknowledges that an important shift in focus has characterized the recent study of narratology: while previous scholarship focused on “what” texts mean, Hoesterey suggests that contemporary narratology concerns itself with “how” and “for whom” texts have meaning (3). The introduction provides a detailed analysis of the key theorists involved in this shift—including Michel Foucault, Dorrit Coh, and Gerard Genette—as well as the influence of various theories, such as neo-Marxism, deconstruction, and Bakhtinian discourse analsyis. Further elaboration on this theoretical shift is crucial to my thesis, as I am dealing very little with the traditional hermeneutic approach to narrative; rather than focusing on the symbolism of various plot elements, my thesis is focusing on how certain plot elements relate to form, and how form reveals a greater socio-historic and literary agenda. – this is a good review – and looks like an interesting text.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Racial Memory and Literary History.” Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory. Ed. Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdes. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 50-62. Print.

Greenblatt traces the shift in the literary field with regards to the hegemony established by canonical Western texts, such as those of Shakespeare and Milton, asserting that while the study of such authors has not diminished (as is evident by their inclusion as major comopnents of undergraduate English curriculums), the most important change is that many texts by minority authors are now being read alongside the canon. Several sections of Greenblatt’s texts are extremely useful to my research, as he outlines three elements that must be considered when approaching postcolonialism: the risk of cynical opportunism; the risk of enforced performativity, whereby members of a certain racial group may feel pressured or expected to write a specific type of literature; and the risk of repetition, whereby a mass of similarly functioning works cancel out each others’ effectivity (58-9). These three precautions are crucial to my thesis, as I do not want to undermine or overdetermine any of my primary texts.

Hasan, Zia, and Mitali P. Wong, eds. The Fiction of South Asians in North America and the Caribbean : A Critical Study of English-Language Works Since 1950. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. Print.

Although I have not yet had a chance to access this text, the table of contents indicate a number of potentially valuable articles: 1. Riddles of time and change: marginality and immigrant fiction; 4. The immigrants’ search for identity: Bharati Mukherjee and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; 7. Narratives of exile: South Asian writers in Canada. Since the title of the text indicates an extremely focused theme, I anticipate that the articles contained in the anthology will provide valuable information for my paper.

Heilmann, Ann, and Mark Llewellyn. Introduction. Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women’s Writing. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. 1-12. Print.

Heilmann and Llewellyn contend that female authors of metafictive/metahistorical novels must “[rise] to the challenge of a changing, postmodern understanding of the nature of history, the historical process […to create] the possibilities of resurrecting, altering and re(imagining) women’s historical lives […]” (3). While I do not disagree with their statements, I believe that such broad analyses of women’s metafiction may subvert the power of narrative in favour of a larger corrective feminist ideology. Personal narratives, such as the fictional autobiographies that I am examining, are particularly vulnerable to theoretical approaches which demand that they function as purely historically corrective works. While my thesis does focus on the therapeutic and socially productive nature of fiction, I am hesitant to force a strictly feminist framework onto my analysis, as I am already contending with a) the responsibility placed on historiographic metafiction in general; b) the responsibility of postcolonialism in historiographic metafiction.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. Print.

Hutcheon’s text is the most influential of my secondary sources, as it defines and elaborates on “historiographic metafiction,” Hutcheon’s term for works of literature that self-reflexively question “historical discourse, intertextuality, strategies of representation, the role of language, the relationship between historical fact and experiential event, etc.” (xii). Hutcheon devotes an entire chapter to the definition of historiographic metafiction, outlining the mutual influences of historical writing and historical novel writing upon each other, citing examples from as early as Aristotle and continuing to chart this relationship through the eighteenth century. Being provided with a cogent genealogy of the history/fiction dialectic is vital to my research. Having read this material, it becomes evident that novels being produced today, despite the theoretical perspectives that allow them more historical or aesthetic freedom, are implicated in such a longstanding debate that it is unreasonable to expect that they will be able to transcend their environments completely. – very nicely put – As such, an additional point of relevance to my thesis is Hutcheon’s contention that postmodern literature cannot escape the “economic (late capitalist) and ideological (liberal humanist) dominants of its time” (xiii). Similarly, my novels cannot escape the socio-economic conditions of their production, dissemination, and reception, but they can, as Hutcheon contends, “question from within [postmodernism]” (xiii).

Hutcheon, Linda. “Rethinking the National Model.” Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory. Ed. Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdes. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 3-49. Print.

Hutcheon’s article builds on the theory outlined in A Poetics of Postmodernism, relating the creation of literature to national identity and ideology. Hutcheon contends that the narrative may no longer be considered an “innocent story pattern” (6), but rather, must be viewed as a vessel for political, cultural, historical, and interpretive ideologies. With regards to postocolonism, then, narratives are necessarily attached to a national identity “defined […] by its relation to the lived and recollected trauma of empire” (20). In order to access this trauma, Hutcheon posits storytelling—or in the case of trauma, “testifying”—as the means by which to achieve some sort of resolution. Since having to testify suggests the status of victimization, Hutcheon warns that the postcolonial narrative is fraught by the following questions: “How can one avoid the repression and amnesia that […] emotion can […] generate? Can one move beyond the potential self-hatred of victimhood?” (23). With regards to my primary texts, therefore, I intend to examine whether or not the texts view victimhood as an active role (one which is transitory as there is the possibility of recovery) or as a passive state (which can never be fully escaped, and is therefore a “safe” place within which to retreat)?

Ifekwunigwe, Jayne O.  “Returning(s): Relocating the Critical Feminist Auto-Ethnographer.” Theorizing Diaspora.  Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur.  Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2003.  184-206. Print.

This article considers the experiences of women living in diaspora through the lens of auto-ethnography, which “emphasizes the writing of the self in relation to and as a writing of the ethnos, group” (184). The first half of the text consists of a series of personal anecdotes, and the second half deals with the English-African diaspora, and the majority of the article is therefore not extremely relevant to my research. However, I was struck by Ifekwunigwe’s following statement: “On an empowered day, I describe myself as a [diasporic] daughter with multiple migratory and ancestral reference points […whereas] on a disempowered day, I am a nationless nomad who wanders from destination to destination […]” (196). With regards to my project, this statement has prompted me to ask the following question: do my primary texts contend that the diasporic status offers positive or negative roles for women?

Kozminuk, Angela. “A Conversation with Anita Rau Badami.” The Peak (7 Oct 1996). Web. 3 Nov 2007.

Kozminuk’s conversation with Anita Rau Badami provides insight into the motivations behind the writing of Tamarind Mem, and helps to elucidate the subsequent packaging and distribution of the novel (as examined by Shazia Rahman’s article). Since Badami does not “identify […] with any one community” and prefers to “belong to Canada and be just part of general society,” it may be presumptuous to assume that her works must provide a means of catharsis or literary representation for the South Asian community specifically. As a result, Badami’s statement that “every writer dreams of [getting] a sense of identification from [readers]” becomes problematized: since she is a female South Asian writer, her novels may be marketed towards Badami’s assumed target audience (one that is based on her visible identity rather than her stated identity of cultural ambiguity).

Miller, Katherine. “Mobility and Identity Construction in Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters: the Tree Wife and Her Rootless Namesake.” Studies in Canadian Literature 29 (2004): 63-74. Academic Search FullText Elite. Web. 11 Nov. 2007.

In this assessment of Bharati Mukherjee’s work, Miller contends that physical spaces are intimately linked to female identity, and that “mobility allows [Mukherjee’s] female characters to move beyond the traditional boundaries of female identity” (63). In her analysis of The Tree Bride’s protagonist, Tara, Miller asserts that despite evidence of Tara’s ability to convert—at least partially—to the “promise offered by American mobility and modern feminist idioms,” she is still “firmly embedded within the social and cultural identity assigned by her gender, caste, and economic status.” Although I am no longer focusing on travel narratives—as I had previously planned—this article nevertheless provides a valuable study of one of my primary texts.

Nagappan, Ramu. Speaking Havoc: Social Suffering and South Asian Narratives. Seattle, WA: U of Washington P, 2005. Print.

As is evident from the title, Nagappan’s text provides a detailed analysis of the precarious situation facing South Asian Narratives that deal with suffering. The text’s main concerns are not only the socio-economic problems of suffering—which I had previously considered as the only reason for the commodification of diasporic narratives—but additionally, the psychological issues associated with the reception and comprehension of the suffering of others. Nagappan states that “[loss] is widely viewed and read about by people the world over. We see the impoverished cities and the millions who toil under corrupt regimes. We know that social suffering happens, but its scale eludes or oppresses us” (11). These observations have significantly altered the manner in which I will be approaching the “popularity” of South Asian diasporic narratives of personal trauma, and have prompted me to reconsider the status of my primary texts. Perhaps, within the framework this text proposes, the novels may be considered as extremely successful. Through their use of first-person narrative, they do not exploit personal trauma, but rather, articulate it in a manner that allows it to be easily processed by an otherwise jaded audience of readers, in order to combat the “normalization [of suffering] that is the immutable reality of the Western world” (11).

Parekh, Bhikhu. “The Indian Diaspora and Its Conception of Home.” The Longing for Home. Ed. Leroy S. Rouner. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1996. 230-42. Print.

Near the beginning of the article, Parekh cautions against using the word diaspora as a catch-all term to describe the various movements of national/cultural/racial groups away from their place of origin, suggesting that employing this term “[runs] the risk of overlooking […] important differences […] and invites misleading comparisons” (230). Parekh suggests that the Indian diaspora must be approached as a phenomenon distinct from other diasporic movements, and provides a comprehensive historical account. Although the following assertion that “ for diasporic Indians […] traveling is not going away from home but rather from one home to another” relates most closely to my previous thesis of travel narratives, I intend to explore this contention more deeply with regards to my primary texts, as movement (or lack thereof) plays an extremely important role in the identities of all four female protagonists.

Rahman, Shazia. “Marketing the Mem: the Packaging and Selling of a First Novel.” Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad 18 (1999): 86-99. Print.

Rahman contends that for the past 30 (now almost 40) years, female South Asian authors in Canada have been published largely by small niche presses. As a result, their works have been unable to gain what Rahman terms “economic capital,” the commercial success that is defined strictly by the number of books sold. This type of capital, however, is not the only means by which to define the success of a book, as many works have achieved critical success—“cultural capital”—in academic circles. The ensuing analysis of Anita Badami Rau’s novel Tamarind Mem is extremely valuable, and I hope to use Rahman’s article as a model by which to explore the marketing strategies of my other primary texts.

Ray, Sangeeta. Introduction. En-Gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives. By Sangeeta Ray. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000. 1-22. Print.

In the introduction to her text, Sangeeta Ray suggests that the connection between female subjects and the preservation of nationhood is inextricably linked in the Indian context, despite the multitude of “strategic [discourses which are] deployed in [the] turn away from the nation, [such as] the mobilization of the category of ‘woman’” (2). If, as Ray contends, women are not only members of a nation—but the embodiment (often quite literally) of nationhood—then we must question whether or not the construction of the “Indian woman” is a means for the positive reappropriation of Indian culture, a perverse reincarnation of the same fetishism invoked by British colonialism. By exploring the difficulties of national identity articulated within my four primary texts, I hope to determine how each narrative associates the diasporic process with problems of national as well as personal identity.

Robins, Kevin. “Changing Spaces of Global Media.” Images of the “Modern Woman” in Asia: Global Media, Local Meanings. Ed. Shoma Munshi. Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2001. 17-33. Print.

Robins’s text focuses on the impact of globalization and transnationalism in global media, focusing extensively on the “potential that may be inherent in developments going on at the present time in the media industries” (17). The connection between national media and national ideology is extensively explored, and Robins contends that the transnationalism and globalization of inclusivity which has been promoted by global media. This corporate ideology does little more than create a global consumer order (5). Robins also comments on the complexities created by media’s lack of borders: although a work of literature may be produced within a contained national or cultural space (and therefore, a contained ideology), the transnational state of media (television signals, radio waves, the purchasing of literature) suggests that these works will be distributed or received by competing ideologies. The function of literature, therefore, can be a positive means whereby to reach non-Indian audiences, or a negative environment that threatens to appropriate foreign material for its own purposes.

Seshachari, Neila C. “Writing as Spiritual Experience: A Conversation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.” Weber Studies: Voices and Viewpoints of the Contemporary West 18:2 (2001): 2-27. Print.

Seshachari’s interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni provides a wealth of support for my assertion that my primary texts function largely as socio-political products of change. Divakaruni states that issues of social justice fuel her work, and that the impetus to write did not necessarily arise out of a desire to be “a writer,” but rather, to use the platform of creative writing as a means to articulate a social struggle. Divakaruni also addresses a number of problems she encountered in the publication and marketing of her work, such as her authorial image, the venues available for publication, and the intended—and actual—audiences of her work. Although this article does not provide a specific case study of my primary text, it nevertheless aids to contextualize the material history of The Mistress of Spices.

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson, eds. Introduction. De/Colonizing the Subject: the Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. xiii-xxxi. Print.

In the introduction to their text, Smith and Watson contend that “because no one can escape the realm of ‘the subjected,’ […] decolonization remains a utopian fantasy” (xiv). In addition to dealing with the specific politics of women’s writing under the current state of “post-modern neo-colonialism” (xv), Smith and Watson posit the autobiography as an extremely powerful means of resisting neo-colonialism as well as reclaiming lost subjectivities. While the text offers essays primarily concerning non-fictional autobiographies, the strength of personal narrative inherent in the use of the first-person voice provides . Most importantly, the “I” represented by a minority (whether gendered, racial, economic) faces vastly different challenges than the “I” of the dominant ideology (in this case, white, male, and European). The latter, Smith and Watson contend, is “embedded in a specific history of privilege” (xvii), whereas the former must contend against its legacy of having been embedded in an “amorphous, generalized [collective] Other” (xvii). This argument has clarified my assumption that the use of the first-person voice would automatically imbue a narrative with some sort of transcendent power. Having realized that all instances of the use of “I” are privileged or hindered by the conceptualization of individuality in history, I will need to determine whether or not my four chosen novels are reclaiming the universal “I” or merely the “I” of a previously collectivized minority.