West of the Border: The Multicultural Literature of the Western American Frontiers - Hardcover

Lape, Noreen Groover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0821413457 ISBN 13: 9780821413456

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Expanding the scope of American borderland and frontier literary scholarship, West of the Border examines the writings of nineteenth- and turn-of-the-century Native, African, Asian, and Anglo American frontier writers. This book views frontiers as “human spaces” where cultures make contact as it considers multicultural frontier writers who speak from “west of the border.”

James P. Beckwourth, a half-black fur trader; Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a Paiute translator; Salishan author Mourning Dove; Cherokee novelist John Rollin Ridge; Sui Sin Far, an Anglo-Chinese short story writer, and her sister, romance novelist Onoto Watanna; and Mary Austin, a white southwestern writer- each of these intercultural writers faces a rite of passage into a new social order. Their writings negotiate their various frontier ordeals: the encroachment of pioneers on the land; reservation life; assimilation; Christianity; battles over territories and resources; exclusion; miscegenation laws; and the devastation of the environment.

In West of the Border, Noreen Groover Lape raises issues inherent in American pluralism today by broaching timely concerns about American frontier politics, conceptualizing frontiers as intercultural contact zones, and expanding the boundaries of frontier literary studies by giving voice to minority writers.

About this title

About the Author:

Noreen Groover Lape is an assistant professor in the Department of Language and Literature at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. She is the author of West of the Border: The Multicultural Literature of the Western Frontiers, which was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice.

From Library Journal:

Lape (language and literature, Columbus State Univ.) here examines many little-known Western American writers, highlighting their diverse backgrounds as well as their views regarding the complexities of the American frontier. She discusses a variety of works of interest to scholars in American and cultural studies, focusing on issues of culture, ethnicity, and stereotypes within Western frontier writing. Lape is especially interested in writers with multicultural frontier experiences, such as Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a sympathetic mediator between the Americans and the Paiutes; James P. Beckwourth, a fur trader and Indian chief; Mourning Dove, an amateur folklorist; Sui Sin Far, an activist for Chinese rights; Onoto Watanna, a popular romance writer; and Mary Austin, a conservationist and anthropologist. This is a work of narrow scholarship, but it does presents a surprising cast of characters. Recommended for academic libraries and libraries with strong American studies collections.DCynde Bloom Lahey, New Canaan Lib., CT
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0821413457
• ISBN 13: 9780821413456
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272