Title: Against amnesia
Description: "In Against Amnesia, Nancy J. Peterson addresses the ongoing postmodernist debate over the possibility and relevance of documentary and official histories. Drawing on Adrienne Rich's claim that women's literature and multicultural literature vigorously resist the amnesio and nostalgia that characterize mainstream North American culture, Perterson examines the struggles toward collective memory in a wealth of contemporary women's writing.".

"Peterson's in-depth analyses of selected works by Louise Erdich, Toni Morrison, Irena Klepfisz, Joy Kogawo, and other contemporary women writers illustrate the ways in which these authors recover and represent the historical memories attached to their racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Their works probe traumatic moments in the marginalized histories of minority peoples, including Native American genocide and dispossession; African American slavery, migration, and displacement; the Holocaust; and the internment of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Peterson contends that these writers employ literary strategies that call attention to the gaps and silences of official histories. At the same time, these literary strategies allow the authors to narrate resonant counterhistories.

Rejecting the playfully imaginative treatment of history found in typical postmodern novels, these contemporary women writers seek to reconstruct historical narratives in their texts and thereby reinvigorate historical memory in contemporary American culture."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Minority authors, History, Literature and history, American literature, History and criticism, Criticism and interpretation, Minorities in literature, Women authors, Minority women, Women and literature, Intellectual life, Ethnic groups in literature, Memory in literature, Minority women in literature, American literature, history and criticism, 20th century, American literature, women authors
Places: United States
People: Louise Erdrich, Irena Klepfisz (1941-), Toni Morrison (1931-2019), Joy Kogawa
Time periods: 20th century