The Book and Beyond

In the past four decades the U.S. cultural scene has witnessed a groundbreaking emergence of a number of Native American writers who have transformed the perception of minority literature, challenging Western audience to reconsider popular stereotypes and received assumptions of indigenous history, identity and culture. Today many of those writers hold prominent positions on popular bestseller and university reading lists, and interest in reading and studying their work is a mainstream trend. Committed to cultural and historical revisionism, they have also expanded the notion of a literary text, and the book as its traditional medium, turning it into a political weapon, a zone of conceptual contact, contestation and dialogue. With his third novel Fools Crow (1986) renowned Blackfeet author James Welch pointed his bow and pen in that direction as well.Set in the 1870s, the period of Indian wars, Fools Crow is a story about the tragedy of Native Americans caused by the coming of the Euro...

When the news broke out that the military successfully neutralized the most wanted terrorists since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, there was a wave of excitement, thrill, tears and patriotic riots in front of the White House. The Washington Post reports several thousands of young Americans rushing to the fence of the White House, in a spontaneous display of jubilation, dancing and cheering ‘USA!’. Not long passed before there were T-Shirts celebrating Bin Laden’s death being sold. President Obama addressed the nation, claiming that justice has been served. Relief flooded through the American world, even in the euphoric moment, as if they have been searching for some crumb of comfort, or partial closure ever since that awful morning of 9/11. The emotional and psychological wounds of the 9/11 tragedy become thus more evident, from ten years ago, when the image of the great world in its image crushed so profoundly that it become something new, an unknown and fearful o...

Kako se približavalo doba Škorpiona, postajalo je sve vjetrovitije, tamno i kišovito. Mokri, tekući grad, koji je vjetrom udarao u stakla iza nezaštićenih samačkih prozora bez zavjesa, iza sirnog namaza skrivenog u hladnoći između prozorskih stakala, nalikovao je na podlu Petrovu nakanu, na grad gorostasnog, buljavog cara tesara razjapljene gubice i oštrog jezika, koji u noćnim morama, s mornarskom sjekirom u podignutoj šaci, sustiže svoje onemoćale, prestrašene podanike. Rijeke su se, dotekavši do nabujalog, zastrašujućeg mora, bacale natrag te šišteći probijale okanca od lijevanog željeza i brzinski podizale razinu vode u podrumima muzeja, oblizujući krhke kolekcije koje su se raspršivale u vlažni pijesak, šamanske maske od pijetlova perja, zakrivljene inozemne mačeve, ogrtače opšivene biserima, žilave noge srditih zaposlenika probuđenih usred noći. Na takve dane, kada se iz kiše, mraka i vjetra koji je savijao stakla ocrtavao bijeli sirasti lik samoće, Simeonov je na rubu postojanja...

“America is now wholly given over to a d – d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied by their trash…” (Hawthorne 304). However Nathaniel Hawthorne chose to voice his frustration with the American female writer, she did play a significant social role in nineteenth-century American cultural history. Formally removed from the political discourse of their generation, women activists turned to other means for disseminating opinions and disapproval. The rising genre of the novel was one of the most effective and visible forms available to American women. Viewed as an historical artifact, the novel was steeped in social convention and cultural ideology. Therefore, when women turned to it to voice opposition to Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, they did so by embracing the traditionally-accepted methodology of the novel, but altering it through subversive language and plots to suit their critical needs. The goal of this paper is to ...

The Croatian poet Augustin (Tin) Ujević (1891–1955) is one of the finest Southern Slav lyric poets and one of the great poets of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. What follows is a sketch of some of the qualities of his lyrical poems, from the particular perspective of an English poet who has translated some of them. My intention is to introduce a poet who, so far, has scarcely been registered at all in the English-speaking world, by prefacing translations of twelve poems. The idea here is to pick out strands and suggest possible entry points. I also want to explore some of the reasons why I think he merits the appellation ‘great poet’, one that is easy enough to bestow, perhaps too easy, but less so to justify. The procedure I shall adopt in the notes that follow will be suggestive and glancing rather than direct and expository. While the notes will of course move into and around some of Tin’s lyrical poems and suggest paths for critical analysis and interpretative discuss...

The present issue of [sic] investigates cultural forms that work against monumentalization of literature as conceived by the notion of the static literary canon. [sic]’s ostensibly Lukácsian approach grasps literature (along the Marxist vein) as a catalyst or as a call to action. The subject of the following discussion, Returning to Haifa written in 1969 by Ghassan Kanafani, offers up the author’s voice representing his politicized position within Palestinian culture and history. Within a newly evolving nationalist Palestinian literature – independent from other Arabic national or canonical Islamic texts – Kanafani’s writing has provided a framework and impetus for questioning accepted hierarchical notions of Palestinian governance; that is, the unequal relationship between the Palestinians in exile, in the territories and in Israel. Thereby his novella problematizes both generally accepted Palestinian and Israeli-Western morality that serves to buttress intransigent though commonly he...