In Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco explores the work of recent Jewish American writers, many of whom have taken unpopular stances on social issues, distancing themselves from the politics and public practice of multiculturalism. While these writers explore the same themes of group-based rights and recognition that preoccupy Latino, African American, and Native American writers, they are generally suspicious of group identities and are more likely to adopt postmodern distancing techniques than to presume to speak for "their people." Ranging from Philip Roth's scandalous 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint to Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan in 2006, the literature Franco examines in this book is at once critical of and deeply invested in the problems of race and the rise of multicultural philosophies and policies in America.

Franco argues that from the formative years of multiculturalism (1965-1975), Jewish writers probed the ethics and not just the politics of civil rights and cultural recognition; this perspective arose from a stance of keen awareness of the limits and possibilities of consensus-based civil and human rights. Contemporary Jewish writers are now responding to global problems of cultural conflict and pluralism and thinking through the challenges and responsibilities of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, if the United States is now correctly-if cautiously-identifying itself as a post-ethnic nation, it may be said that Jewish writing has been well ahead of the curve in imagining what a post-ethnic future might look like and in critiquing the social conventions of race and ethnicity.

About the Author

Dean J. Franco is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing.

Reviews

Race, Rights & Recognition comments on issues that were pressing in the 1960s, have remained so through the twentieth century, and will continue to be important in the future.... Franco presents invaluable persepectives in his analyses that preserve academic quality while remaining passionate and often personal in their tone. His book is not only thought provoking but also meticulously-structured and therefore suitable for both students well-versed in literary theory and scholars alike.

-- Attila Lenart-Muszka * Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies *

Franco departs from prevailing literary scholarship interpreting Jewish writing within the parameters of Euro-American Jewish history and culture and also from standard multicultural rejectionism to analyze selected texts by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman, Lore Segal, Tony Kushner, and Gary Shteyngart through multicultural and postcolonial lenses.... Sensitive to the exclusion of Jewish American writers from multicultural curricula and criticism..., Franco moves beyond the dominant critical paradigms to persuasively argue for the inclusion of Jewish writers in American ethnic studies.

* Choice *



Book Information
ISBN 9780801450877
Author Dean Franco
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 24mm