Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh

Scholarship on the writer Amitav Ghosh has addressed issues of nationalism, postcolonial identity, ecocriticism, testimony, subalternity, and historiography. But the idea of Ghosh as an Asian American author with a particular relationship to the United States and its national mythologies, has barely...

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Main Author: Maxey, Ruth
Other Authors: Srikanth, Rajini
Format: Book Section
Published: Cambridge University Press 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36303/
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author Maxey, Ruth
author2 Srikanth, Rajini
author_facet Srikanth, Rajini
Maxey, Ruth
author_sort Maxey, Ruth
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Scholarship on the writer Amitav Ghosh has addressed issues of nationalism, postcolonial identity, ecocriticism, testimony, subalternity, and historiography. But the idea of Ghosh as an Asian American author with a particular relationship to the United States and its national mythologies, has barely been considered. In this essay, I explore this neglected aspect of Ghosh’s œuvre by looking at the idea of America in his writing and by situating his work within what I term "the Bengali American grain". Reading his work alongside that of other Bengali American writers and arguing that it is more ambitious thematically and more anti-imperialistic, I probe Ghosh’s problematic relationship with the United States, asking how his hemispheric writing continues to extend and even alter the terrain often associated with Asian American literature.
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spelling nottingham-363032020-05-04T17:28:56Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36303/ Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh Maxey, Ruth Scholarship on the writer Amitav Ghosh has addressed issues of nationalism, postcolonial identity, ecocriticism, testimony, subalternity, and historiography. But the idea of Ghosh as an Asian American author with a particular relationship to the United States and its national mythologies, has barely been considered. In this essay, I explore this neglected aspect of Ghosh’s œuvre by looking at the idea of America in his writing and by situating his work within what I term "the Bengali American grain". Reading his work alongside that of other Bengali American writers and arguing that it is more ambitious thematically and more anti-imperialistic, I probe Ghosh’s problematic relationship with the United States, asking how his hemispheric writing continues to extend and even alter the terrain often associated with Asian American literature. Cambridge University Press Srikanth, Rajini Song, Min Hyong 2016-02-01 Book Section PeerReviewed Maxey, Ruth (2016) Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh. In: The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature. Cambridge University Press, pp. 567-582. ISBN 9781107053953 Amitav Ghosh; Bengali American; anti-imperialism; Asian American literature https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-cambridge-history-of-asian-american-literature/79B3EC38CFAE524B2ECA286AEBDB056F
spellingShingle Amitav Ghosh; Bengali American; anti-imperialism; Asian American literature
Maxey, Ruth
Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
title Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
title_full Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
title_fullStr Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
title_full_unstemmed Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
title_short Beyond national literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
title_sort beyond national literatures: empire and amitav ghosh
topic Amitav Ghosh; Bengali American; anti-imperialism; Asian American literature
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36303/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36303/