List Books » Growing Up Ethnic: Nationalism and the Bildungsroman in African American and Jewish American Fiction
Authors: Martin Japtok
ISBN-13: 9780877459231, ISBN-10: 0877459231
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Date Published: April 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Martin Japtok is an associate professor of English at Palomar College. He is the editor of Postcolonial Perspectives on Women Writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S.
Growing Up Ethnic examines the presence of literary similarities between African American and Jewish American coming-of-age stories in the first half of the twentieth century; often these similarities exceed what could be explained by sociohistorical correspondences alone. Martin Japtok argues that these similarities result from the way both African American and Jewish American authors have conceptualized their "ethnic situation." The issue of "race" and its social repercussions certainly defy any easy comparisons. However, the fact that the ethnic situations are far from identical in the case of these two groups only highlights the striking thematic correspondences in how a number of African American and Jewish American coming-of-age stories construct ethnicity. Japtok studies three pairs of novelsJames Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man and Samuel Ornitz's Haunch, Paunch and Jowl, Jessie Fauset's Plum Bun and Edna Ferber's Fanny Herself, and Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones and Anzia Yezierska's Bread Giverand argues that the similarities can be explained with reference to mainly two factors, ultimately intertwined: cultural nationalism and the Bildungsroman genre. Growing Up Ethnic shows that the parallel configurations in the novels, which often see ethnicity in terms of spirituality, as inherent artistic ability, and as communal responsibility, are rooted in nationalist ideology. However, due to the authors' generic choicethe Bildungsromanthe tendency to view ethnicity through the rhetorical lens of communalism and spiritual essence runs head-on into the individualist assumptions of the protagonist-centered Bildungsroman.The negotiations between these ideological counterpoints characterize the novels and reflect and refract the intellectual ferment of their time. This fresh look at ethnic American literatures in the context of cultural nationalism and the Bildungsroman will be of great interest to students and scholars of literary and race studies.
Ch. 1 | The autobiography of an ex-coloured man and Haunch, paunch and jowl : two versions of passing | 29 |
Ch. 2 | Fanny herself and Plum bun : art and ethnic solidarity | 71 |
Ch. 3 | Brown girl, brownstones and Bread givers : reconciling ethnicity and individualism | 103 |
Ch. 4 | Ethnic nationalism and ethnic literary responses | 134 |