Martha J. Cutter

" ... Analyzes ... works in the archive of antislavery illustrated books published from 1800 to 1852 alongside other visual materials that depict enslavement"--

Empathy, Graphic Narrative, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800-1852

The Illustrated Slave

Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

Chapter 12 Jennifer Glaser, "Art Spiegelman and the Caricature Archive"--Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y

History, Memory, and Multiethnic Graphic Novels

Redrawing the Historical Past

Starting with Salman Rushdie's assertion that even though something is always lost in translation, something can always be gained, Martha Cutter examines the trope of translation in twenty English-language novels and autobiographies by contemporary ethnic American writers. She argues that these works advocate a politics of language diversity--a literary and social agenda that validates the multiplicity of ethnic cultures and tongues in the United States. Cutter studies works by Asian American, Native American, African American, and Mexican American authors. She argues that translation between cultures, languages, and dialects creates a new language that, in its diversity, constitutes the true heritage of the United States. Through the metaphor of translation, Cutter demonstrates, writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison, and Richard Rodriguez establish a place within American society for the many languages spoken by multiethnic and multicultural individuals. Cutter concludes with an analysis of contemporary debates over language policy, such as English-only legislation, the recognition of Ebonics, and the growing acceptance of bilingualism. The focus on translation by so many multiethnic writers, she contends, offers hope in our postmodern culture for a new condition in which creatively fused languages renovate the communications of the dominant society and create new kinds of identity for multicultural individuals.

Contemporary Ethnic American Writing and the Politics of Language Diversity

Lost and Found in Translation

Redrawing the Historical Past examines how multiethnic graphic novels portray and revise U.S. history. This is the first collection to focus exclusively on the interplay of history and memory in multiethnic graphic novels. Such interplay enables a new understanding of the past. The twelve essays explore Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece's Incognegro, Gene Luen Yang's Boxers and Saints, GB Tran's Vietnamerica, Scott McCloud's The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln, Art Spiegelman's post-Maus work, and G. Neri and Randy DuBurke's Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, among many others. The collection represents an original body of criticism about recently published works that have received scant scholarly attention. The chapters confront issues of history and memory in contemporary multiethnic graphic novels, employing diverse methodologies and approaches while adhering to three main guidelines. First, using a global lens, contributors reconsider the concept of history and how it is manifest in their chosen texts. Second, contributors consider the ways in which graphic novels, as a distinct genre, can formally renovate or intervene in notions of the historical past. Third, contributors take seriously the possibilities and limitations of these historical revisions with regard to envisioning new, different, or even more positive versions of both the present and future. As a whole, the volume demonstrates that graphic novelists use the open and flexible space of the graphic narrative page--in which readers can move not only forward but also backward, upward, downward, and in several other directions--to present history as an open realm of struggle that is continually being revised. Contributors: Frederick Luis Aldama, Julie Buckner Armstrong, Katharine Capshaw, Monica Chiu, Jennifer Glaser, Taylor Hagood, Caroline Kyungah Hong, Angela Lafien, Catherine H. Nguyen, Jeffrey Santa Ana, and Jorge Santos.

Martha J. Cutter

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