White Diaspora: The Suburb and the Twentieth-Century American Novel

White Diaspora: The Suburb and the Twentieth-Century American Novel
ISBN-10
0691057354
ISBN-13
9780691057354
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
247
Language
English
Published
2001-03-04
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Author
Catherine Jurca

Description

In novels as disparate as Tarzan (written by Tarzana, California, real-estate developer Edgar Rice Burroughs), Richard Wright's Native Son, and recent fiction by John Updike and Richard Ford, Jurca finds an emphasis on the suburb under siege, a place where the fortunate tend to see themselves as powerless. From Babbitt to Rabbit, the suburban novel casts property owners living in communities of their choosing as dispossessed people. Material advantages become artifacts of oppression, and affluence is fraudulently identified as impoverishment. The fantasy of victimization reimagines white flight as a white diaspora.

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