What is an "American" identity? The tension between populism and
pluralism, between homogeneity and heterogeneity, has marked the United
States since its inception. In The Divided States, leading scholars
and critics argue that the US is, and has always been, a site where
multiple national identities intersect in productive and challenging
ways. Scrutinizing conflicting nationalisms and national identities, the
authors ask, Whose stories get told and whose do not? Who or what
promotes the idea of a unified national identity in the United States?
How is the notion of a unified national identity disrupted? What myths
and stories bind the US together? How representative are these stories?
What are the counternarratives? And, if the idea of national homogeneity
is a fallacy, what does tie us together as a nation?
Working across auto/biography studies, American studies, and human
geography--all of which deal with the current interest in competing
narratives, "alternative facts," and accountability--the essays engage
in and contribute to critical conversations in classrooms, scholarship,
and the public sphere. The authors draw from a variety of fields,
including anthropology; class analysis; critical race theory; diasporic,
refugee, and immigration studies; disability studies; gender studies;
graphic and comix studies; Indigenous studies; linguistics; literary
studies; sociology; and visual culture. And the genres under scrutiny
include diary, epistolary communication, digital narratives, graphic
narratives, literary narratives, medical narratives, memoir, oral
history, and testimony.
This fresh and theoretically engaged volume will be relevant to anyone
interested in the multiplicity of voices that make up the US national
narrative.
