Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 1 (1999) Issue 4 Article 2 Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return Patricia D. Fox Indiana University Bloomington Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Recommended Citation Fox, Patricia D. "Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return." 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This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu> CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb> Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Volume 1 Issue 4 (December 1999) Article 2 Patricia D. Fox, "Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol1/iss4/2> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.4 (1999) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol1/iss4/> Abstract: Patricia D. Fox discusses in her article, "Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return," the meditations, in novel and essay, of variously positioned writers and protagonists as each contemplates return to a never glimpsed or long-lost geographical and cultural center. Attempting to decipher the grounding in place and time, by heritage or tradition, Fox's analysis juxtaposes selected texts: Hungarian Rhapsodies: Essays on Ethnicity, Identity and Culture (Richard Teleky, 1997); Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa (Keith B. Richburg, 1998); Dreaming in Cuban: A Novel (Cristina García, 1992); The Hundred Secret Senses (Amy Tan, 1995); Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano's Coming-of-Age in America (Gustavo Pirez Firmat, 1995); and Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter (J. Nozipo Maraire, 1996). The discussion compares the at once postmodern and nostalgic negotiation of the enunciated perception of displacement, on the one hand, and, on the other, a truncated sense of belonging, be it circumstantial, constructed, or assumed. Thus, the study suggests that, coupling imagination and substitution in the search of tangible ties (e.g., language), essayist, novelist, and protagonist transform themselves into architects of a unique transcultural history and diversely place themselves within a desired territorial context by the studied reconciliation of polarities. Patricia D. Fox, "Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return" page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.4 (1999): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol1/iss4/2> Patricia D. FOX Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return In Hungarian Rhapsodies: Essays on Ethnicity, Identity and Culture, Richard Teleky explains "Exploring my ethnicity became a way of exploring the arbitrary nature of my own life. It was not so much a search for roots as for a way of understanding rootlessness -- how I stacked up against another way of being" (175). In the bitterly less rhapsodic tone of Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, Keith B. Richburg proclaims "Thank G-d my nameless ancestors brought across the ocean in chains and leg irons, made it our alive. Thank G-d I am an American" (vi). In the wonderfully complicated distance between these two assertions, the perception of rootlessness or displacement impacts, and ultimately defines, the invention of personal identity. More importantly, the pronounced polarity evinced here lays bare the often masked tension between individual confrontations of racial/ethnic heritage on the one hand and the construction of an imaginary melded cultural -national or continental -- identity on the other. The resulting balancing act -- the overt or tacit strain between two worlds, between past and present -- represents a reiterated focus in a number of recent novels and essays, inclu (...truncated)