Crystal Parikhcontends that unlike humanitarianism, which views its objects as victims, humanrights provide avenues for the creation of political subjects. Affiliatingtransnational works of American literature with decolonization, socialist, andother political struggles in the global south, she illuminates a human rightscritique of idealized American rights and freedoms that have been globalized inthe twenty-first century.
By:
Crystal Parikh
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
Spine: 38mm
ISBN: 9780816697069
ISBN 10: 081669706X
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 17 October 2017
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
ELT Advanced
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Introduction: The U.S. Good Life, the UN World, and the Human Rights Record UN International Bill of Human Rights; Toni Morrison, Beloved 1. Other Humanities: The Bandung Spirit and the Right to Self-Determination UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Ernest Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men; Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior 2. “Come Almost Home”: The Impossible Subject of Human Rights UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters; Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life 3. “A Globe within Him”: Security at the Borderline of War and Torture UN Convention against Torture; Susan Choi, The Foreign Student 4. Regular Revolutions: The Feminist Travels of Human Rights UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; Julia Alvarez, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies 5. Being Well: Minor Subjects and the Right to Health UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth; Ana Castillo, So Far from God Conclusion: An Aesthetics of Kin and the Rights of the Child UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; Aimee Phan, We Should Never Meet Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
Crystal Parikh is associate professor at New York University in the departments of Social and Cultural Analysis and English. She is author of An Ethics of Betrayal: The Politics of Otherness in Emergent U.S. Literaturesand Culture and coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature.
Reviews for Writing Human Rights: The Political Imaginaries of Writers of Color
Clearly passionate and committed, Crystal Parikh has read broadly and deeply into this very exciting topic and opens up a range of provocative questions. --David Palumbo-Liu, author of The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age In this ambitious study, Crystal Parikh shows how the literature of writers of color has always been preoccupied with what are now called 'human rights.' Her wide-ranging and urgent readings, written with the precision and care of a passionate literary and social critic, reminds us of how much literature matters in imagining and demanding justice and humanity. --Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Refugees and The Sympathizer
