Fellow Travelers - (New World Studies) by John Ochoa (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- Road trips loom large in the American imagination, and stories from the road have been central to crafting national identities across North and South America.
- About the Author: John Ochoa is Associate Professor of Spanish at Pennsylvania State University and author of The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity.
- 178 Pages
- Literary Criticism, American
- Series Name: New World Studies
Description
About the Book
"Fellow Travelers examines accounts of pairs of men who travel together from three historical crossroads in the Americas: the "new dawn" at the end of the colonial period; the period of expansion into the frontier; and "containment" during the Cold War. During each of these times, the nations of North and South were either inventing or reinventing themselves in the shadow of empire, and during these times, travel accounts describing "what is out there" provided road maps for these reinventions"--Book Synopsis
Road trips loom large in the American imagination, and stories from the road have been central to crafting national identities across North and South America. Tales of traversing this vast geography, with its singular landscape, have helped foster a sense of American exceptionalism. Examining three turning points that shaped exceptionalism in both Americas--the late colonial and early Republican period, expansion into the frontier, and the Cold War--John Ochoa pursues literary travelers across landscapes and centuries. At each historical crossroads, the nations of North and South invented or reinvented themselves in the shadow of empire. Travel accounts from these periods offered master narratives that shaped the notion of America's postimperial future.
Fellow Travelers recounts the complex, on-the-road relationships between travelers such as Lewis and Clark, Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Huckleberry Finn and Jim, Kerouac's Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, and the Che Guevara and Alberto Granado of The Motorcycle Diaries. Such journeys reflect concerns far larger than their characters: tensions between the voices of the rugged individual and the democratic many, between the metropolis and the backcountry, and between the intimate and the vast. Working across national literatures, Fellow Travelers offers insight into a shared process of national reinvention and the construction of modern national imaginaries.
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)--a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries--and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University.
Review Quotes
A witty, erudite, and original contribution to hemispheric American studies.
--Lois Parkinson Zamora, University of HoustonAbout the Author
John Ochoa is Associate Professor of Spanish at Pennsylvania State University and author of The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity.