Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Queer Genre
- Race and the Politics of Queer and Trans Representation
- Space and the Regional Imaginary of Queer Literature
- 33 Queer Southern Literature and the Dirty South
- 34 Queer DiaspoRican Circuits
- 35 “where sadness makes sense”
- 36 Queer New England Regionalism
- 37 Queer Beginnings at the End of the Frontier
- 38 Queer American Literature in the World
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
36 - Queer New England Regionalism
from Space and the Regional Imaginary of Queer Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2024
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Queer Genre
- Race and the Politics of Queer and Trans Representation
- Space and the Regional Imaginary of Queer Literature
- 33 Queer Southern Literature and the Dirty South
- 34 Queer DiaspoRican Circuits
- 35 “where sadness makes sense”
- 36 Queer New England Regionalism
- 37 Queer Beginnings at the End of the Frontier
- 38 Queer American Literature in the World
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
Summary
This chapter provides background information about the literary mode known as regionalism and explains what is queer about New England regionalism. It analyzes White-authored New England regionalist fiction from the 1865-1915 period, using Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel Deephaven as its primary example, to argue that White-authored New England regionalism imagines independent, queer lives for White women characters, living outside of the heteronuclear family. The chapter then turns to examine the underacknowledged African-American women’s tradition of New England regionalism, a tradition that reworks conventions of the earlier, White-dominated one. This African-American tradition begins in the nineteenth century and extends well into the twentieth: Harriet Wilson, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Dorothy West, and Ann Petry all limn the contours of New England life for Black women, engaging and claiming an inheritance of defiant, queer New England character while exploring the limitations and violence of that inheritance when understood as only available to White people.
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- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature , pp. 658 - 671Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024