Community Boundaries and Border Crossings: Critical Essays on Ethnic Women Writers [Hardcover]

Globalization and transnationalism have reshaped our communities and their borderlines. Communities exceed fixed boundaries, existing instead in the liminal spaces where narratives intersect, clash, or cooperate. These liminal spacesphysical and virtual, local and globalprovide opportunities for diversifying discussions on diaspora, cultural hybridity, and ethnic identity. Ethnic women writers make significant contributions to this dialogue regarding the reconfiguration of people and their perimeters.

A multigenre and multicultural text, Community Boundaries and Border Crossings explores the novels, short stories, essays, autobiographies, testimonios, plays, poems, and hybrid poetics of established and emerging ethnic women writers. This collection of critical essays highlights the new zones of cultural contact and exchange that are defining the twenty-first century. Each chapter reflects an awareness of cultural changes and challenges, engaging readers in a richly productive conversation concerning the interconnectedness of border crossings and community boundaries.

Kristen Lillvis is associate professor of English at Marshall University.

Robert Miltner is professor of English at Kent State University at Stark.

Molly Fuller is teaching fellow in literature at Kent State University.

Preface
Kristen Lillvis
Introduction
Molly Fuller
Part One: Deconstructing Boundaries

Language, Matter, Movement: Dynamic Community in Cathy Park Hongs Dance Dance Revolution
Tana Jean Welch
Solidarity and Simultaneity in Sherley Anne Williamss Dessa Rose
Kristen Lillvis
Border Transgression, Adolescent Transition, and the Quest for Justice in Louise Erdrichs The Round House
Molly Fuller
Part Two: Intra-spaces and Liminality
The Modernist Aesthetic and the Immigrant: Anzia Yezierskas Communities of Countrymen
Jana Tigchelaar
Life Between Cultures: Reconfiguring the Community in the Young Adult Novell3Ÿ