Race, Rights, and Recognition: Jewish American Literature since 1969

by Dean Franco

Overview

In Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco explores the work of recent Jewish American writers, many of whom have taken unpopular stances on social issues, distancing themselves from the politics and public practice of multiculturalism. While these writers explore the same themes of group-based rights and recognition that preoccupy Latino, African American, and Native American writers, they are generally suspicious of group identities and are more likely to adopt postmodern distancing techniques than to presume to speak for "their people." Ranging from Philip Roth's scandalous 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint to Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan in 2006, the literature Franco examines in this book is at once critical of and deeply invested in the problems of race and the rise of multicultural philosophies and policies in America.

Franco argues that from the formative years of multiculturalism (1965–1975), Jewish writers probed the ethics and not just the politics of civil rights and cultural recognition; this perspective arose from a stance of keen awareness of the limits and possibilities of consensus-based civil and human rights. Contemporary Jewish writers are now responding to global problems of cultural conflict and pluralism and thinking through the challenges and responsibilities of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, if the United States is now correctly—if cautiously—identifying itself as a post-ethnic nation, it may be said that Jewish writing has been well ahead of the curve in imagining what a post-ethnic future might look like and in critiquing the social conventions of race and ethnicity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801450877
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	06/15/2012
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dean J. Franco is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: The Politics and Ethics of Jewish American Literature and Criticism 1

Part I Pluralism, Race, and Religion

1 Portnoy's Complaint: It's about Race, Not Sex (Even the Sex Is about Race) 29

2 Re-Reading Cynthia Ozick: Pluralism, Postmodernism, and the Multicultural Encounter 56

3 The New, New Pluralism: Religion, Community, and Secularity in Allegra Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls 80

Part II Recognition, Rights, and Responsibility

4 Recognition and Effacement in Lore Segal's Her First American 109

5 Responsibility Unveiled: Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul 139

6 Globalization's Complaint: Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan and the Culture of Culture 170

Epilogue: Less Absurdistan, More Boyle Heights 193

Notes 209

Bibliography 223

Index 233

What People are Saying About This

Christopher D. Douglas

"Dean J. Franco's innovative and interesting readings of Jewish American writers show them closely engaged with the racial and cultural politics of the civil rights and post–civil rights eras. Race, Rights, and Recognition contains genuine 'aha!’ moments of inspired interpretation and sleuthing. This rewarding book’s thick literary history and contextualization advances the argument that Jewish American literature has been deeply attentive to the history of African American civil rights and cultural nationalism."

Jonathan Freedman

"In the morally strenuous and intellectually capacious Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco takes the study of Jewish American writing to a new level of sophistication and seriousness. Beginning with writing that is solidly in the Jewish American literary canon—including Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick—he extends his survey to literature that challenges the very boundaries of Jewish America, such as the work of Tony Kushner and Gary Shteyngart. This book ranges well beyond the terms in which Jewish writing has traditionally been read—ethnic self-assertion and ethnoreligious questing after 'identity'—to encompass serious engagement with political history on one hand and political philosophy on the other."

Editorial Reviews

Race, Rights & Recognition comments on issues that were pressing in the 1960s, have remained so through the twentieth century, and will continue to be important in the future.... Franco presents invaluable persepectives in his analyses that preserve academic quality while remaining passionate and often personal in their tone. His book is not only thought provoking but also meticulously-structured and therefore suitable for both students well-versed in literary theory and scholars alike.

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies - Attila Lénárt-Muszka

Franco departs from prevailing literary scholarship interpreting Jewish writing within the parameters of Euro-American Jewish history and culture and also from standard multicultural rejectionism to analyze selected texts by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman, Lore Segal, Tony Kushner, and Gary Shteyngart through multicultural and postcolonial lenses.... Sensitive to the exclusion of Jewish American writers from multicultural curricula and criticism..., Franco moves beyond the dominant critical paradigms to persuasively argue for the inclusion of Jewish writers in American ethnic studies.

Choice

"Race, Rights & Recognition comments on issues that were pressing in the 1960s, have remained so through the twentieth century, and will continue to be important in the future.... Franco presents invaluable persepectives in his analyses that preserve academic quality while remaining passionate and often personal in their tone. His book is not only thought provoking but also meticulously-structured and therefore suitable for both students well-versed in literary theory and scholars alike."

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies - Attila Lénárt-Muszka

"Franco departs from prevailing literary scholarship interpreting Jewish writing within the parameters of Euro-American Jewish history and culture and also from standard multicultural rejectionism to analyze selected texts by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman, Lore Segal, Tony Kushner, and Gary Shteyngart through multicultural and postcolonial lenses. . . . Sensitive to the exclusion of Jewish American writers from multicultural curricula and criticism . . . , Franco moves beyond the dominant critical paradigms to persuasively argue for the inclusion of Jewish writers in American ethnic studies."—Choice (1 December 2012)

"Race, Rights & Recognition comments on issues that were pressing in the 1960s, have remained so through the twentieth century, and will continue to be important in the future. . . . Franco presents invaluable persepectives in his analyses that preserve academic quality while remaining passionate and often personal in their tone. His book is not only thought provoking but also meticulously-structured and therefore suitable for both students well-versed in literary theory and scholars alike."—Attila Lénárt-Muszka, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (Fall 2014)

"In the morally strenuous and intellectually capacious Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco takes the study of Jewish American writing to a new level of sophistication and seriousness. Beginning with writing that is solidly in the Jewish American literary canon—including Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick—he extends his survey to literature that challenges the very boundaries of Jewish America, such as the work of Tony Kushner and Gary Shteyngart. This book ranges well beyond the terms in which Jewish writing has traditionally been read—ethnic self-assertion and ethnoreligious questing after 'identity'—to encompass serious engagement with political history on one hand and political philosophy on the other."—Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan, author of The Temple of Culture: Assimilation and Anti-Semitism in Literary Anglo-America

"Dean J. Franco's innovative and interesting readings of Jewish American writers show them closely engaged with the racial and cultural politics of the civil rights and post–civil rights eras. Race, Rights, and Recognition contains genuine 'aha!’ moments of inspired interpretation and sleuthing. This rewarding book’s thick literary history and contextualization advances the argument that Jewish American literature has been deeply attentive to the history of African American civil rights and cultural nationalism."—Christopher D. Douglas, University of Victoria, author of A Genealogy of Literary Multiculturalism

From the Publisher

"In the morally strenuous and intellectually capacious Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco takes the study of Jewish American writing to a new level of sophistication and seriousness. Beginning with writing that is solidly in the Jewish American literary canon—including Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick—he extends his survey to literature that challenges the very boundaries of Jewish America, such as the work of Tony Kushner and Gary Shteyngart. This book ranges well beyond the terms in which Jewish writing has traditionally been read—ethnic self-assertion and ethnoreligious questing after 'identity'—to encompass serious engagement with political history on one hand and political philosophy on the other."

Jonathan Freedman

"Dean J. Franco's innovative and interesting readings of Jewish American writers show them closely engaged with the racial and cultural politics of the civil rights and post–civil rights eras. Race, Rights, and Recognition contains genuine 'aha!’ moments of inspired interpretation and sleuthing. This rewarding book’s thick literary history and contextualization advances the argument that Jewish American literature has been deeply attentive to the history of African American civil rights and cultural nationalism."

Christopher D. Douglas