Dead Women Talking
eBook - ePub

Dead Women Talking

Figures of Injustice in American Literature

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Dead Women Talking

Figures of Injustice in American Literature

About this book

Dead women speak as agents of social justice in work by some of the best-known writers of American literature.

Brian Norman uncovers a curious phenomenon in American literature: dead women who nonetheless talk. These characters appear in works by such classic American writers as Poe, Dickinson, and Faulkner as well as in more recent works by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, and others. These figures are also emerging in contemporary culture, from the film and best-selling novel The Lovely Bones to the hit television drama Desperate Housewives.

Dead Women Talking demonstrates that the dead, especially women, have been speaking out in American literature since well before it was fashionable. Norman argues that they voice concerns that a community may wish to consign to the past, raising questions about gender, violence, sexuality, class, racial injustice, and national identity. When these women insert themselves into the story, they do not enter precisely as ghosts but rather as something potentially more disrupting: posthumous citizens. The community must ask itself whether it can or should recognize such a character as one of its own. The prospect of posthumous citizenship bears important implications for debates over the legal rights of the dead, social histories of burial customs and famous cadavers, and the political theory of citizenship and social death.

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Yes, you can access Dead Women Talking by Brian Norman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Criticism Theory. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction: Recognizing the Dead
  7. 1 Dead Woman Wailing
  8. 2 Dead Woman Dictating
  9. 3 Dead Woman Rotting
  10. 4 Dead Woman Cursing
  11. 5 Dead Woman Wanting
  12. 6 Dead Woman Heckling
  13. 7 Dead Women Gossiping
  14. 8 Dead Women Healing
  15. 9 Dead Woman Coming Of Age
  16. 10 Dead Woman Singing
  17. 11 When Dead Women Don’t Talk
  18. Notes
  19. Bibliography
  20. Index