Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex"GRIN Verlag, 2007 - 96 sider Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar), 36 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Instead of investigating the most obvious aspect of the novel, namely gender identity, this work focuses on the ethnic novel Middlesex with its particular interpretation of ethnicity and ethnic identity. These assumed marginal aspects are of unique importance when it comes to their relationship with the main theme of the book - gender identity. The concept of Greekness in the novel is not just a side effect or accidentally connected to the hermaphrodite story: the connection is clear as the hermaphrodite myth goes back to the Greeks. What Americanness means to the protagonist and the individual characters in the novel; whether they would see themselves as hyphenated Americans or not are questions tangled in this paper. Middlesex is a novel that overflows with different notions of ethnic representation, ethnic identity, ethnic struggle and self-fashioning. Identity is nothing fixed but always changing as it is subject to choice and self-invention. Eugenides depicts an overarching concept of the new man/woman in the sense that the hermaphrodite Zora's statement "'Because we're what's next.'" (552) is the central message. |
Indhold
| 7 | |
The Silk Road | 25 |
Blacks vs Whites | 39 |
Ethnic Group Belonging | 60 |
Ethnic Food | 68 |
Conclusion | 82 |
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Almindelige termer og sætninger
American ancestry aspects aware become Cal/Callie Cal/Callie’s called Chapter Eleven characters comes common completely concept connection considered context cultural defined descent describes Desdemona Detroit Dream elements English especially ethnic group ethnic identity Eugenides everything evident example fact Fard Muhammad father feel figures fixed Ford gender girls Greek hair hand he/she hermaphrodite his/her human hybrid idea immigrant immigrant novel important interest Jimmy kind Lefty literature living look means melting pot mentioned metafiction Middlesex Milton Minor myths narrator Nation of Islam never novel original parents particular person play postmodern presented question race racial reader reason reference relations Riots role roots sense serves shows side social society Sollors Sourmelina stands starts statement Stephanides family story takes talk term theory tradition truth understand United writing
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Side 51 - I realized that I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.
Side 78 - But he said unto them : All men cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb : and there are eunuchs, which were made eunuchs by men : and there are eunuchs, which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Side 10 - ethnic groups" those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for the propagation of group formation; conversely, it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists.
Side 30 - Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross — how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God.
Side 13 - I WAS born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life's story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to tell.
Side 14 - In America, nothing lasts. I can say that now and it doesn't shock me, but I think it was the hardest lesson of all for me to learn. We arrive so eager to learn, to adjust, to participate, only to find the monuments are plastic, agreements are annulled. Nothing is forever, nothing is so terrible, or so wonderful, that it won't disintegrate.
Side 14 - ... race' and on the other hand what I think is the beginning of a positive conception of the ethnicity of the margins, of the periphery. That is to say, a recognition that we all speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular experience, a particular culture, without being contained by that position as 'ethnic artists...
Side 17 - Sinologists have criticised me for not knowing myths and for distorting them; pirates correct my myths, revising them to make them conform to some traditional Chinese version. They don't understand that myths have to change, be useful or be forgotten. Like the people who carry them across oceans, the myths become American. The myths I write are new, American.
Side 56 - ... fundamental cultural values, realized in overt unity in cultural forms 3. makes up a field of communication and interaction 4. has a membership which identifies itself, and is identified by others, as constituting a category distinguishable from other categories of the same order.
Side 22 - At the confluence of two or more genetic streams, with chromosomes constantly 'crossing over,' this mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool.