Embracing the Other: Addressing Xenophobia in the New Literatures in English.

361 Pages·2008·3.14 MB·English

by  Dunja M Mohr

Embracing the Other
Addressing Xenophobia in
the New Literatures in English
C ros s
Readings in the Post / Colonial
ultures
Literatures in English
95
ASNEL Papers 11
Series Editors
Gordon Collier Hena Maes–Jelinek Geoffrey Davis
(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
ASNEL Papers appear under the auspices of the
Gesellschaft für die Neuen Englischsprachigen Literaturen e.V. (GNEL)
Association for the Study of the New Literatures in English (ASNEL)
Frank Schulze–Engler, President
(English Department, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main)
Formatting, layout, and final editing: Gordon Collier
Embracing the Other
Addressing Xenophobia in the
New Literatures in English
ASNEL Papers 11
Edited by
Dunja M. Mohr
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2377-2
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2008
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents

EMBRACING THE OTHER: AN INTRODUCTION ix

POETRY
SUSAN N. KIGULI
One Wing; Home Floats in the Distance;
Floating My Presence; Stories Retold 3

THEORY, WRITING HISTORY, AND TEXTUALITY
EDWIN THUMBOO
Conditions of Cross-Cultural Perceptions:
The Other Looks Back 11
JUDITH DELL PANNY
Benign Xenophobia?
The Testimony of Maori Literature 37
RUSSELL WEST–PAVLOV
‘Daft Questions’: Xenophobia, Teaching, and Social Semiosis
in Caribbean–British Fiction: Using Intertextuality and Narratology
to Analyze a Text by David Dabydeen 49

MIGRANT AND BORDER NARRATIVES
MALA PANDURANG
How Brave Is Our New World? 63
DANILO VICTORINO MANARPAAC
Desire and Loathing in Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart and
Bienvenido Santos’s The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Robert Taylor 71
VERA ALEXANDER
“Worlds of Disenchantment”:
Alienation and Change in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments 83
DIPLI SAIKIA
Writing From the Border, Doing Away With Margins:
Carl Muller’s Sri Lankan Burgher Narrative 97
VIRGINIA RICHTER
The Civilized Ape 113

TRANSITIONAL STATES
MARTIN GENETSCH
Race and Racism in Contemporary Canadian Fiction:
M.G. Vassanji’s No New Land 127
JOCHEN PETZOLD
White Angst in South Africa:
The Apocalyptic Visions of John Conyngham 141
NATIVIDAD MARTÍNEZ MARÍN
Nadine Gordimer’s Later Novels:
Or, The Fiction of Otherness 153

NEGOTIATING IDENTITY AND ALTERITY
MARY E. MODUPE KOLAWOLE
Multicultural Strategies and Alterity:
Transgressing the Other in Contemporary Nigerian Women’s Short Stories 169
RAIHANAH M.M.
The Other Within:
The Malaysian Experience 193
JÖRG HEINKE
The Resistance to Being (Em)Braced:
Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs and David Malouf’s Johnno 205
SANDHYA PATEL
The Difficulty of Being:
Reading and Speaking in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things 227
LAURENZ VOLKMANN
The Quest for Identity in Benjamin Zephaniah’s Poetry 245

DIASPORA AND ORIENTALISM
DAVID S. LA BRECHE
Stereotype, Prejudice, and Illusion in the Austral-Asian Otherworld 267
SISSY HELFF
Desired Exotica:
Gendered Spaces in Queer West Indian Diasporic Fiction 279
CANADIAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN THEATRE
GINNY RATSOY
Dramatizing Alterity:
Relational Characterization in Postcolonial British Columbia Plays 295
HENNING SCHÄFER
Disappointing Expectations:
Native Canadian Theatre and the Politics of Authenticity 307
HAIKE FRANK
Embracing Oneself and the Other:
Overcoming Racial Hatred in South African Drama 327

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 337

EMBRACING THE OTHER
AN INTRODUCTION

All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But – would you believe it? – They look upon We
As only a sort of They!

[…]

All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!1

Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It’s a fairy-tale! It’s
still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person
[…] on the globe.2

L
IKE PACKAGING, it is the title of a book or article that we first
look at; both a lavish and a drab and careless wrapping give a first
impression and trigger certain expectations. Neither necessarily
delivers what it seems to promise. What, then, do we associate with the ambi-
guous phrase ‘embracing the Other’ – which, by extension, might be read as

1 Rudyard Kipling, “We and They,” in Kipling, Debits and Credits (Garden City NY:
Doubleday, 1926): 277–80.
2 Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001): 236.