Introduction. Polish American women : a cultural and literary construct -- Faces of resistance : Monica Krawczyk's immigrant women -- At midcentury : Polish Americans writing their identity -- Suzanne Strempek Shea's gendered ethnicity in the 1970s and 1980s -- Leslie Pietrzyk and Ellen Slezak constructing motherhood -- The tragic mother in Danuta Mostwin's "Jocasta" -- Transgressive sexuality in Polish American fiction of the last twenty-five years -- (Im)migrant homelands in the early twenty-first century -- Experiments in ethnicity : the "solidarity" 1.5 generation -- Fifty years of girling : models of Polish American femininity in young adult literature.
Summary:
"Though often unnoticed by scholars of literature and history, Polish American women have for decades been fighting back against the patriarchy they encountered in America and the patriarchy that followed them from Poland. Through close readings of several Polish American and Polish Canadian novels and short stories published over the last seven decades, Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction traces the evolution of this struggle and women's efforts to construct gendered and classed ethnicity. Focusing predominantly on work by North American born and immigrant authors that represents the Polish American Catholic tradition, Grazyna J. Kozaczka puts texts in conversation with other American ethnic literatures. She positions ethnic gender construction and performance at an intersection of social class, race, and sex. She explores the marginalization of ethnic female characters in terms of migration studies, theories of whiteness, and the history of feminist discourse. Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction tells the complex story of how Polish American women writers have shown a strong awareness of their oppression and sought empowerment through resistive and transgressive behaviors"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American studies series
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.