The volume explores how contemporary representations of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II are reshaping the collective memory of that painful experience, while at the same time implicitly offering a commentary on current limitations of human and civil rights in the United States. One of the worst cases of violation of civil liberties against an ethnic group in the history of the country, the Japanese American internment has recently become the subject of a renewed interest both in literature and in other popular media. With their rendition of events, twenty-first century authors and artists are offering a new, enriching, and more inclusive understanding of the incarceration experience, both in order to broaden the comprehension of that event and highlight how it is still relevant today. By analyzing works of literary fiction, memoirs, TV series, and graphic novels, this monograph argues that contemporary literature and other media play a significant role in the development of a new conversation about the internment experience.

Autorentext

Nicolangelo Becce is Associate Professor of American Literature at Roma Tre University (Italy). He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Naples "L'Orientale" (Italy) in 2010, and from 2014 to 2019 he worked as an Assistant Professor of English Language and American Literature at the University of Fukui (Japan). He has published essays on American literature, corpus linguistics, the CEFR, American TV series and graphic novels, and is the author of two books, Apparizioni spiritiche e fantasmi letterari. Il Modern Spiritualism e lo sviluppo della ghost story ("Spiritualistic Apparitions and Literary Ghosts. Modern Spiritualism and the Development of the Ghost Story", 2016) and Positive Outcomes. A Corpus-Based Analysis of a Placement Interview System for EFL Students in Higher Education (2019).