| Detailed Course Description: Desire for knowledge, acceptance, companionship, and community are essential in realizing true self/personhood; individuals who lack communal love and who unquestionably internalize discourses circulated by the dominant culture fail to achieve a sense of true self hood. As humans, we are interwoven into an intersubjective tapestry of love and compassion. Growth of personhood entails an emotional bond between us: lack of communal love leads to isolation, and then to alienation, insanity or even death. Against this backdrop, we will read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975), Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street (1984), and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine (1989) in relation to present-day views on self, desire, and community. We will examine how self and community interact and are understood within ethnic, racial, and cultural boundaries and how they are represented in multicultural literature. |
