Coalition Literature - (Post*45) by Francisco E Robles (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In a series of incisive readings, Francisco E. Robles provides a literary history of midcentury US multiethnic literature, tracing the shift from coalitional aesthetics to multiculturalism by focusing on how migrancy and labor politics shape literary innovation. Along the way, Robles shows how writers kept the Popular Front's legacy of coalitional aesthetics alive through literary practices of what he calls speaking with, whereby authors undo their authority as scribes, audiences become participatory interpreters, and texts emerge as places of communal and collaborative work. Beginning with significant, unexpected connections between Zora Neale Hurston and Muriel Rukeyser, and delving deeply into the work of Sanora Babb, Woody Guthrie, Gwendolyn Brooks, poets of the Memphis Sanitation Strike, Carlos Bulosan, Tomâas Rivera, and authors included in This Bridge Called My Back, Robles examines texts whose range of experimental strategies deliberately engage figurations of movement, migration, and coalition. The experimentation these works display emerges from the particular methods of speaking with that they contain, whether it's overcoming exclusion by finding new ways of representing migrants through word and sound, or in the astonishing ways these authors conceive of migrancy as neither static nor statistical, but as a modality that necessitates writerly innovation. The result is a genealogy of coalitional aesthetics as a significantly important branch of American midcentury multiethnic writing that sustained and indeed extended the Popular Front and its legacies"--

Book Synopsis

In a series of incisive readings, Francisco E. Robles provides a literary history of midcentury US multiethnic literature, tracing the shift from coalitional aesthetics to multiculturalism by focusing on how migrancy and labor politics shape literary innovation. Along the way, Robles shows how writers kept the Popular Front's legacy of coalitional aesthetics alive through literary practices of what he calls speaking with, whereby authors undo their authority as scribes, audiences become participatory interpreters, and texts emerge as places of communal and collaborative work.

Beginning with significant, unexpected connections between Zora Neale Hurston and Muriel Rukeyser, and delving deeply into the work of Sanora Babb, Woody Guthrie, Gwendolyn Brooks, poets of the Memphis Sanitation Strike, Carlos Bulosan, Tomás Rivera, and authors included in This Bridge Called My Back, Robles examines texts whose range of experimental strategies deliberately engage figurations of movement, migration, and coalition. The experimentation these works display emerges from the particular methods of speaking with that they contain, whether it's overcoming exclusion by finding new ways of representing migrants through word and sound, or in the astonishing ways these authors conceive of migrancy as neither static nor statistical but as a modality that necessitates writerly innovation. The result is a genealogy of coalitional aesthetics as a significantly important branch of American midcentury multiethnic writing that sustained and indeed extended the Popular Front and its legacies.

Review Quotes

"At the heart of Coalition Literature is a seemingly-simple invitation that readers from all disciplines should take to heart: resist the impulse to dilute our understanding of life into totalizing genres of knowing, genres that invite us to narrow our scope according to the size of available archetypes, when a wholly vibrant world is coming together around us, making meaning moment by moment, in process and never stasis. Robles reminds his readers that there is much at stake in our reading of the world and in our reading of ourselves." --Halley Roberts, E3W Review of Books

"Robles deserves praise for integrating writers from a litany of writing styles into a unified argument. However, most impressive is his ability to bring authors from different time periods into conversation with one another.... Highly recommended." --J. Davis, Choice

"Francisco Robles's Coalition Literature: Aesthetics on the Move in Midcentury US Multiethnic Writing offers a remarkable literary history on coalition aesthetics employed by multiracial writers who worked through and alongside difference." --Mariana Gutiérrez Lowe, A Contracorriente

"Coalition Literature develops a spirited, fascinating, and critically astute account of an eclectic archive of writers. Equally at ease analyzing fiction or nonfiction, esoteric or amateur lyric, chord progression or musical performance, Robles delivers a host of forceful and illuminating interpretations." --Mary Esteve, Concordia University (Montreal)

"Robles restores the history of a powerful multiracial expressive politics and offers a compelling new point of departure for American literary history in all its multiplicity." --Harris Feinsod, Johns Hopkins University

About the Author

Francisco E. Robles is Assistant Professor of English, University of Notre Dame.