Call for Book Chapters: "Women’s Writing and Storytelling as Resilience in Transnational Narratives"

It is well known that Toni Morrison draws inspiration from historical records to reconstruct African American popular memory and slave culture in her novels, thereby critically reimagining, recreating, and reinterpreting historical absence, effectively recovering and resisting dominant cultural forces intent on the erasure of Black life and culture. Thereby, Morrison transforms the “present of narrative enunciation into the haunting memorial of what has been excluded, excised, evicted” from history (Morrison as cited in Bhaba 284). When the literature written by immigrants is marginalized, there are inevitable concerns about injustices in relation to race, gender,  class, and/or nationality. For example, memoirs, particularly by female writers, are not considered serious literature. Additionally,  testimonies from everyday individuals, asylum seekers, refugees, etc., are also excluded from both dominant narratives of the nation and literary canons and are seen as insignificant. Consequently, the underrepresentation of these marginalized voices effectively dismisses, silences, and/or buries critical testimonies. The recovery of these narratives & testimonies is not only a mode of resistance and resilience to the higher powers, but it also introduces different dimensions of history and human experiences in the larger cultural narrative. In this panel, we will discuss the significance of telling your own stories.

This book will discuss the significance of women telling their own stories and how testimonial narratives are integral to recovering marginalized and forgotten histories. We welcome submissions, particularly about stories on women and their transnational identities concerning injustices of race, gender, class, and nationality.

Topics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Transnational narratives or testimonies by or about female

• Asian female diaspora in the Asiatic and Americas

• Erased, suppressed, censored, or forgotten narratives, writings, or media productions by female

• Intersectionality of race, gender, class, sexuality, or nationality on female figures

• Feminist ecocriticism or ecopoetics through a transnational or diasporic lens

• Neoliberal, racial capitalistic, or decolonial criticism related to female

• Activism and community building centering on female

• Female intellectuals or female labor in the academia

• Digital humanities projects by female scholars

Please submit an abstract no longer than 500 words to Liyang Dong (ldong11@binghamton.edu), the volume editor, by October 5th. Additionally, please include a short biography (max. 300 words).