Photographic Ekphrasis in Cuban-American Fiction

Missing Pictures and Imagining Loss and Nostalgia
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-35995-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 205, 184 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 399 g

Reihe: Cross/Cultures

Photographic Ekphrasis in Cuban-American Fiction offers new readings of Cuban-American novels and autobiographies, demonstrating that a focus on photographs (alluded to, analyzed, and/or obsessively recurrent in the narrative discourse) provides fresh insights into these texts. The study introduces the concept of photographic ekphrasis as a reading tool for diasporic literature and argues that visual images are important components of narratives about dislocation, nostalgia, and transcultural experience. Authors treated in depth include Carlos Eire, Cristina García, Oscar Hijuelos, Roberto G. Fernández, Ana Menéndez, Achy Obejas, and Gustavo Pérez Firmat. Photographic Ekphrasis in Cuban-American Fiction offers an original perspective on Cuban-American literature and contributes to the scholarship on ekphrasis and on the interactions between photography and narrative.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Söllner, Louisa

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Missing Pictures: A Compressed Philosophy of Photography

2 Locating Cuban-American Literature: Diaspora and the Politics of Longing

3 Photography Displaced: A Conversation between Theories

4 Rethinking Ekphrasis: Photography in Cuban-American Literature

1 Re-membering Cuba in Autobiographical Writing

1 Autos, Bios, Graphe, and Ikóna: Elements of Autobiographical Writing

2 The Erotics of Exile: Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s Next Year in Cuba

3 Reading the Past: Carlos Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana

4 “Dying is the only option and not an option at all”: Negotiating Cultural Attachments

2 (Post-)Nostalgia Novels and the Mediation of History

1 Cuba Reinvented: Strategies of Nostalgia, Pastiche, and Simulation

2 Nostalgia and the Uncanny: Oscar Hijuelos’s The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien

3 Nostalgia and Cannibalization: Roberto G. Fernández’s Holy Radishes!

4 Pastiche Revisited: Inauthenticity and Dislocation

3 Rewriting History in Female Fiction

1 Histories of Skin: Photography, Genealogy, and Dislocation

2 “Cuba’s Dying Birds”: Cristina García’s The Agüero Sisters

3 Veiled Origins and Secret Histories: Achy Obejas’s Days of Awe

4 Umbilical Cords and Reproduction: The Discontinuous Strings of History

4 Ekphrasis in the Age of Globalization

1 “I am a Cosmopolitan”: Self-Narration and Globalized Image Culture

2 “A Game with History”: Ana Menéndez’s Loving Che

3 Mediating Love and War: Ana Menéndez’s The Last War

4 Images without Origin and the Failures of Self-Narration

Conclusion

Works Cited

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Louisa Söllner (PhD, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, 2012) works at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. She has published articles on Cuban-American literature and art. Her research investigates the relationship between visual media and writing.