Counternarratives

In this class, we will read and discuss how contemporary authors are challenging official historical narratives. We will look at works that juxtapose personal suffering with public censorship, and investigate literature's capacity to redeem the human record. 

Literature often resists official discourse and usurps and supplants dominant narratives with compelling counternarratives. Maxine Hong Kingston famously wrote in her memoir, "I am a reflection of my mother's secret poetry and hidden angers," challenging not just personal history but an entire identity of assimilation and oppression that marked her family’s immigration experience. Audre Lorde coined the term biomythography, "combining elements of autobiography, the novel, and personal mythology," thereby allowing historical absences to become opportunities for resistance. Most recently John Keene undertook a literary counter-archeology in his collection of novellas, Counternarratives, writing through speculative fiction, newspaper clippings and archival research to unveil the inner lives of those erased by Western slave history and colonial representations from the 17th century to the present day.

This class will be useful for students interested in documentary writing, memory studies, oral history and literatures of resistance.