White Women in Racialized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Literature

Description

Explores the unique relationship between white women and racial Others in a wide variety of literary works. At once racially privileged and sexually marginalized, white women have been energetic in calling for solidarity among all women in opposing patriarchy, but have not been equally motivated to examine their own racial privilege. White Women in Racialized Spaces turns primarily to literature to illuminate the undeniable blind spots in white women’s comprehension of their advantage. The contributors cover extensive historical ground, from early captivity narratives of white women in seventeenth-century America up to the present-day trials of Louise Woodward and Manjit Basuta, both British nannies accused of causing the deaths of their infant charges in the United States. Their wide-ranging discussions also include representations of white women in Native American, Latin American, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. The volume ultimately makes the case that, by creating alternative scenarios to particular ethical, political, or emotional problems against which readers and characters test their responses, literature forms an ideal vehicle for exploring white women’s actual and potential roles in their efforts to undercut the oppressive force of whiteness. “The most striking feature of this volume is the unique variation of subject matter it adjoins to an increasingly popular, yet still somewhat elusive, object of inquiry: ‘whiteness.’ Without question, it represents a worthwhile contribution to a debate that is still unfolding.” — Mike Hill, editor of Whiteness: A Critical Reader Contributors include Elizabeth Ammons, Peter A. Chvany, Delia Caparoso Konzett, Susan Koshy, Paula M. Krebs, Melissa Lee Miller, Susan Morgan, Samina Najmi, Terri Hume Oliver, Diana R. Paulin, Céline Philibert, Vijay Prashad, Monali Sheth, Rajini Srikanth, and Zhou Xiaojing. Samina Najmi is Visiting Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at Babson College. Rajini Srikanth is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the coeditor, with Lavina Dhingra Shankar, of A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America. WHITE WOMEN IN RACIALIZED SPACES: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Literature......Page 5 Contents......Page 9 Foreword: ELIZABETH AMMONS......Page 11 Acknowledgments......Page 13 1. Introduction: SAMINA NAJMI AND RAJINI SRIKANTH......Page 15 2. South Asians and the Complex Interstices of Whiteness: Negotiating Public Sentimentin the United States and Britain......Page 43 3. Whiteness and Soap-Opera Justice: Comparing the Louise Woodwardand Manjit Basuta Cases......Page 65 4. Mother Teresa as the Mirror of Bourgeois Guilt......Page 81 5. Ventriloquism in the Captivity Narrative: White Women Challenge European American Patriarchy......Page 99 6. “Those Indians Are Great Thieves, I Suppose?”: Historicizing the White Woman in The Squatter and the Don......Page 119 7. “Let Me Play Desdemona”: White Heroines and Interracial Desire inLouisa May Alcott’s “My Contraband” and “M.L.”......Page 133 8. “Getting in Touch with the True South”: Pet Negroes, White Crackers, and Racial Staging in Zora Neale Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee......Page 145 9. Prison, Perversion, and Pimps: The White Temptress in The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Iceberg Slim’s Pimp......Page 161 10. Subject Positions in Elizabeth Bishop’s Representations of Whiteness and the “Other”......Page 181 11. How Can a White Woman Love a Black Woman?: The Anglo-Boer War and Possibilities of Desire......Page 207 12. From Betrayal to Inclusion: The Work of the White Woman’s Gazein Claire Denis’s Chocolat......Page 221 13. The Imperial Feminine: Victorian Women Travellers in Egypt......Page 241 14. Chinese Coolies, Hidden Perfume, and Harriet Beecher Stowe in Anna Leonowens’s: The Romance of the Harem......Page 257 About the Contributors......Page 271 B......Page 275 F......Page 276 K......Page 277 M......Page 278 S......Page 279 Z......Page 280 B......Page 281 E......Page 282 L......Page 283 R......Page 284 T......Page 285 W......Page 286