The Border and the Line: Race, Literature, and Los Angeles (Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity) - Softcover

Franco, Dean J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503607771 ISBN 13: 9781503607774

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Los Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.―and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers―this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space.

The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.

About this title

About the Author

Dean J. Franco is Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Race, Rights, and Recognition: Jewish American Literature since 1969 (2012) and Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing (2006).

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503607771
• ISBN 13: 9781503607774
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224