Oral and Written Narratives and Cultural Identity

This interdisciplinary volume centers on the interrelations of storytelling and various manifestations of cultural identity, from written to oral and from autobiographical to regional and national. Indigenous storytelling, as well as storytelling for and by children and the elderly, are the main focus of these essays. Together, these fifteen texts make a significant contribution toward a deeper understanding of various aspects of textual and oral narrative: they broaden the lines of inquiry into multidisciplinary and multicultural interests, particularly those centering on the construction, expression, and contextualization of various types of identity; and they illustrate the deployment of storytelling not only as testimony, contestation, and subversion but also as peacebuilding. Many countries, languages and cultures are herein represented from the United States and Canada to Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia, from English to Japanese to Greek to Italian to the languages of indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Philippines.

Autorentext

The Editors: Francisco Cota Fagundes holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic languages and literatures and is a full professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Irene Maria F. Blayer holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and is a full professor in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Brock University.

Inhalt

Contents: Francisco Cota Fagundes/Irene Maria F. Blayer: Introduction - Leah Bradshaw: Narrative in Dark Times - Kyoko Takashi/Douglas Wilkerson: Recovering the 'Japanese' in Narrative - Hazel J. Wrigglesworth: The Function of Ilianen Manobo Storytelling in the Preservation of Culture - Jane E. Oliver: It's Where My Roots Are: Identity and Place in the Lives of Older Rural New Brunswick Women - Branca Telles Ribeiro/Solange de Azambuja Lira/Márcia Guimarães/Clémence Jouët-Pastré: The Acquisition of Voice in Clinical Settings: Identity Shifts in a Narrative of a Brazilian immigrant Woman - E. Jean Langdon: Dialogicality, Conflict and Memory in Siona Ethnohistory - Carl Leggo: Autobiographical Writing and Voice: Five Echoes - Kwok-Kan Tam: The Self as Hybrid Contestation: Three Autobiographical Stories from Singapore and Malaysia - Weimin Tang: Zone of Negotiation: Storytelling, Intersubjectivity and Transcultural Metamorphosis - Reading the Ethnic Texts The Woman Warrior and The Bonesetter's Daughter - Sylvia Mittler: Subversive Storytelling: Popular Historiography, Alternative Cultural Memory and Modern Greek Humorist Nikos Tsiforos - María Jesús Cabarcos Traseira: Landscaping and Narrating White Australian-ness in Murray Bail's Eucalyptus - Corrado Federici: Subjective Identity and Objective Reality in the 'Portuguese' Novels of Antonio Tabucchi - Alison Searle: Narrative, Metaphor and Myth in C.S. Lewis's Testimonial Novel Till We Have Faces - Sandra L. Beckett: 'Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall': The Many Faces of Snow White - Ron Smith/June Neill: Peace Stories and Peacebuilding: Bringing Narrative Thinking to School Improvement for Peace in Northern Ireland.