Book contents
- Chicago: A Literary History
- Chicago
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Literary History of Chicago
- Part I The Rise of Chicago and the Literary West
- Part II Business Unusual: A New Urban American Literature
- Part III Radicalism, Modernism, and the Chicago Renaissance
- Part IV A City of Neighborhoods: The Great Depression, Sociology, and the Black Chicago Renaissance
- Part V Traditions and Futures: Contemporary Chicago Literatures
- Chapter 23 Division Street America: The Nine Chicago Literary Lives of Studs Terkel
- Chapter 24 Sexual and Other Perversities: David Mamet and Contemporary Chicago Theater
- Chapter 25 Chicago Crime, Blue Collar and White: Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski Novels
- Chapter 26 Drawing Chicago: Chris Ware’s Graphic City
- Chapter 27 Across Neighborhood and National Boundaries: Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Mexican Chicago
- Chapter 28 Stuart Dybek and the New Chicago’s Literature of Neighborhood
- Chapter 29 Chicago Now: Aleksandar Hemon, Dmitry Samarov, Erika L. Sánchez, and the Contemporary City of Immigrants
- Chapter 30 Afterword: What Will Become of Us? The Future of Chicago Literatures
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 29 - Chicago Now: Aleksandar Hemon, Dmitry Samarov, Erika L. Sánchez, and the Contemporary City of Immigrants
from Part V - Traditions and Futures: Contemporary Chicago Literatures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2021
- Chicago: A Literary History
- Chicago
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Literary History of Chicago
- Part I The Rise of Chicago and the Literary West
- Part II Business Unusual: A New Urban American Literature
- Part III Radicalism, Modernism, and the Chicago Renaissance
- Part IV A City of Neighborhoods: The Great Depression, Sociology, and the Black Chicago Renaissance
- Part V Traditions and Futures: Contemporary Chicago Literatures
- Chapter 23 Division Street America: The Nine Chicago Literary Lives of Studs Terkel
- Chapter 24 Sexual and Other Perversities: David Mamet and Contemporary Chicago Theater
- Chapter 25 Chicago Crime, Blue Collar and White: Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski Novels
- Chapter 26 Drawing Chicago: Chris Ware’s Graphic City
- Chapter 27 Across Neighborhood and National Boundaries: Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Mexican Chicago
- Chapter 28 Stuart Dybek and the New Chicago’s Literature of Neighborhood
- Chapter 29 Chicago Now: Aleksandar Hemon, Dmitry Samarov, Erika L. Sánchez, and the Contemporary City of Immigrants
- Chapter 30 Afterword: What Will Become of Us? The Future of Chicago Literatures
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the writing of Aleksandar Hemon, Dmitry Samarov, and Erika L. Sánchez as a process of carving out a personal space in the city. Their diverse literary output exemplifies the complexities of immigrant identity and its myriad dialogues with home, boundaries, and space. Hemon’s literature reveals a nuanced spatial-temporal sensitivity that establishes a multilayered and overlapping experience of Chicago and his native Sarajevo. Russian-born Samarov encounters Chicago through the window and rearview mirror of his taxi, observing the city and its inhabitants close-up yet from the sidelines. His unique perspective encompasses the immigrant outsider stance alongside an intimate insider knowledge, facilitating his tersely articulated and poignant vignettes of Chicago’s city- and human-scapes. Sánchez, second generation Mexican, boldly crosses restricting boundaries in her work, challenging constraints of family, community, neighborhood, and nation. By straddling a mixture of cultures, languages, genres, and themes, she cultivates her own distinctive space. Taken together, the writers offer a literary panoply of what it means to be an immigrant in Chicago today.
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- ChicagoA Literary History, pp. 414 - 428Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021