Duke University Press

Subjects
American Studies, Latin American Studies, Postcolonial and Colonial Studies

Look Away! considers the U.S. South in relation to Latin America and the Caribbean. Given that some of the major characteristics that mark the South as exceptional within the United States—including the legacies of a plantation economy and slave trade—are common to most of the Americas, Look Away! points to postcolonial studies as perhaps the best perspective from which to comprehend the U.S. South. At the same time it shows how, as part of the United States, the South—both center and margin, victor and defeated, and empire and colony—complicates ideas of the postcolonial. The twenty-two essays in this comparative, interdisciplinary collection rethink southern U.S. identity, race, and the differences and commonalities between the cultural productions and imagined communities of the U.S. South and Latin America.

Look Away! presents work by respected scholars in comparative literature, American studies, and Latin American studies. The contributors analyze how writers—including the Martinican Edouard Glissant, the Cuban-American Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and the Trinidad-born, British V. S. Naipaul—have engaged with the southern United States. They explore William Faulkner’s role in Latin American thought and consider his work in relation to that of Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Many essays re-examine major topics in southern U.S. culture—such as race, slavery, slave resistance, and the legacies of the past—through the lens of postcolonial theory and postmodern geography. Others discuss the South in relation to the U.S.–Mexico border. Throughout the volume, the contributors consistently reconceptualize U.S. southern culture in a way that acknowledges its postcolonial status without diminishing its distinctiveness.

Contributors. Jesse Alemán, Bob Brinkmeyer, Debra Cohen, Deborah Cohn, Michael Dash, Leigh Anne Duck, Wendy Faris, Earl Fitz, George Handley, Steve Hunsaker, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Dane Johnson, Richard King, Jane Landers, John T. Matthews, Stephanie Merrim, Helen Oakley, Vincent Pérez, John-Michael Rivera, Scott Romine, Jon Smith, Ilan Stavans, Philip Weinstein, Lois Parkinson Zamora

“Look Away . . . is one of the most stimulating books in Southern studies in recent years. It opens up the (U.S.) South to areas of inquiry that are fruitful and highly promising—and, indeed, at a time when the states of the ‘Late Confederacy’ are assuming an increasingly Latin flavor, it looks not only ‘away’ but to also to the future.” — Fred Hobson , Florida Historical Quarterly

“[A] thoughtful and important contribution to southern studies, New World studies, and inter-American studies. Most significantly, the volume offers readers an impressive critical intervention that promises to challenge the way that comparatists connect cultural identity and regional influence.”
— Sophia A. McClennen , Comparative Literature Studies

“[C]onsistently provocative. . . . Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn have assembled an impressive group of thinkers who, collectively, provide a detailed comparative literary history. . . .” — Will Brantley , Southern Literary Journal

“It is in the consideration of the meaning and place of race in society that Look Away! may be the most profound.” — Junius P. Rodriquez, Louisiana History

“Taken together, these essays tell us much about nationalism, racism, regionalism, and cultural identity in the Americas. . . . [I]t is a useful, stimulating, and thought-provoking collection that encourages new ways to perceive the often insular and parochial post-colonial south.” — Ralph Lee Woodward Jr. , Alabama Review

“There is much that is monumental both temporally and spatially about this volume. Apart from being 521 pages long, it clearly aims to be a multi-field or, better yet, transdisciplinary (re)defining endeavor.” — Maria DeGuzman , Mississippi Quarterly

“This is a rich collection of outstandingly innovative essays, wide-ranging and enlightening. . . . Look Away! is an indispensable aid to new understandings of a conflicted region.” — Faith Pullin , Journal of American Studies

"[T]he political readings are provocative, insightful, even brilliant. . . . [L]ikely to prove indispensable to literary critics."
— R. H. Solomon, Choice

"The collection's strength [is] its broad and eclectic scope. . . . Look Away succeeds in fleshing out the possibilities for postcolonial analyses of the U.S. South. . . ." — Julie M. Weise , Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

“Look Away! is an important collection that expands the vocabularies and national symbol systems that scholars can deploy to think comparatively about the Americas. It is especially useful in breaking the binary between North and South that has so restricted southern literary and historical studies.” — Patricia Yaeger, author of Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women’s Writing