Against Amnesia: Contemporary Women Writers and the Crises of Historical Memory

In Against Amnesia, Nancy J. Peterson addresses the ongoing postmodernist debate over the possibility and relevance of documentary and official histories. Drawing on Adrienne Rich's claim that women's literature and multicultural literature vigorously resist the amnesia and nostalgia that characterize mainstream North American culture, Peterson examines the struggles toward collective memory in a wealth of contemporary women's writing.

Peterson's in-depth analyses of selected works by Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Irena Klepfisz, Joy Kogawa, and other contemporary women writers illustrate the ways in which these authors recover and represent the historical memories attached to their racial/ethnic backgrounds. Their works probe traumatic moments in the marginalized histories of minority peoples, including Native American genocide and dispossession; African American slavery, migration, and displacement; the Holocaust; and the internment of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Peterson contends that these writers employ literary strategies that call attention to the gaps and silences of official histories. At the same time, these literary strategies allow the authors to narrate resonant counterhistories. Rejecting the playfully imaginative treatment of history found in typical postmodern novels, these contemporary women writers seek to reconstruct historical narratives in their texts and thereby reinvigorate historical memory in contemporary American culture.

Author: Nancy J. Peterson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 04/23/2001
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9780812235944

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2001 pg. 311

About the Author
Nancy J. Peterson is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University.