NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

There’s a new cast of characters in American fiction: kids, teens, young adults who won’t grow up or grow up much too soon—kids of immigrants, most of them, millennials, a lot of them, and they’re telling stories, different stories, stories that dispel stereotypes and decenter the dominant, white gaze. In this seminar we will examine contemporary novels and short stories by immigrants and kids of immigrants that resist cliched diaspora narratives. Starting with the old guard that first defined immigrant writing, including Vladimir Nabokov and Sandra Cisneros, we’ll dig into how this genre has evolved in the 21st century first with Julie Otsuka and Jhumpa Lahiri, and, more recently, with Jenny Zhang, Jade Sharma, and Anthony Veasna So. Duty, guilt, grandmas, food, debt, intergenerational trauma and buried family secrets that rise from the dead will be ever-present, of course, but we’ll also find joy, absurdity, blasphemy, and other surprises as we study the distinct ways these authors reframe the immigrant experience and move beyond the lens of identity politics. Though our primary focus will be coming-of-age narratives, we’ll read numerous works from adult perspectives, too, grappling especially with the concept “anagnorisis” (Greek: “recognition”), which, in literary works, is a character’s often startling discovery of their true identity. Throughout the course we’ll use what we learn to produce new creative work biweekly, all while envisioning and executing ways to ultimately recast the “other” in our own fiction.