{"title":"Literary Criticism--Subjects \u0026 Themes--Culture, Race \u0026 Ethnicity","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"baldwin-styron-and-me","title":"Baldwin, Styron, and Me","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction - \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFinalist for the 2025 Governor General's Literary Award in Translation - \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFinalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e- A \u003cem\u003eGlobe\u003c\/em\u003e 100 Best Book of 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e- A CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e- A \u003cem\u003eQuill \u0026amp; Quire\u003c\/em\u003e Notable Book of 2025\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn unlikely literary friendship from the past sheds light on the radicalization of public debate around identity, race, and censorship.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron's guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. \u003cem\u003eThe Confessions of Nat Turner\u003c\/em\u003e was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDecades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In \u003cem\u003eBaldwin, Styron, and Me\u003c\/em\u003e, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers' surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today's politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen--even in disagreement.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 1771966262\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9781771966269\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Abdelmoumen, Mélikah, Khordoc, Catherine\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Biblioasis\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Biblioasis","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Mar 2025)","offer_id":46080076873925,"sku":"9781771966269","price":17.05,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9781771966269.jpg?v=1776034348"},{"product_id":"to-save-and-to-destroy-writing-as-an-other","title":"To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sympathizer\u003c\/i\u003e comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBorn in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing? Over the course of six captivating and moving chapters, Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through lenses that are, by turns, literary, historical, political, and familial. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEach piece moves between writers who influenced Nguyen's craft and weaves in the haunting story of his late mother's mental illness. Nguyen unfolds the novels and nonfiction of Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, William Carlos Williams, and Maxine Hong Kingston, until aesthetic theories give way to pressing concerns raised by war and politics. What is a writer's responsibility in a time of violence? Should we celebrate fiction that gives voice to the voiceless--or do we confront the forces that render millions voiceless in the first place? What are the burdens and pleasures of the \"minor\" writer in any society? Unsatisfied with the modest inclusion accorded to \"model minorities\" such as Asian Americans, Nguyen sets the agenda for a more radical and disquieting solidarity with those whose lives have been devastated by imperialism and forever wars.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0674298179\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780674298170\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Nguyen, Viet Thanh\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Belknap Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Belknap Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Apr 2025)","offer_id":46080349405381,"sku":"9780674298170","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780674298170.jpg?v=1776036559"},{"product_id":"love-and-death-in-the-american-novel","title":"Love and Death in the American Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003eA provocative work of American literary criticism covering Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, and others. Fielder's groundbreaking work changed the way we see the American novel--and American culture at large--forever.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLeslie A. Fiedler's \u003ci\u003eLove and Death in the American Novel\u003c\/i\u003e is a study of American fiction from its beginnings up through the 1960s. In this tour de force from the great mid-twentieth-century era of literary criticism, Fiedler argues that American literature is gothic at heart, marked by a terror of sexuality and an obsession with violence, escape, and death. The American writer, he says, confronts a world that is \"without a significant history or a substantial past; a world which had left behind the terror of Europe not for the innocence it dreamed of, but for new and special guilts associated with the rape of nature and the exploitation of dark-skinned people.\" Fiedler's own book, as brilliantly written as it is provocatively conceived, is itself a contribution to American literature. His puckish suggestion is that we read it \"not as a conventional scholarly book--or an eccentric one--but a kind of gothic novel (complete with touches of black humor) whose subject is American experience as recorded in our classic fiction.\"\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 1681379694\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9781681379692\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Fiedler, Leslie a.\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"New York Review of Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Apr 2026)","offer_id":46291814383813,"sku":"9781681379692","price":23.7,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9781681379692.jpg?v=1780113123"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/collections\/literary-criticism-subjects-themes-culture-race-ethnicity.oembed","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}