Fostering critical response-ability through feminist close-readings of transnational literature: Jamaica Kincaid’s short stories as a case study
Verónica P. Recchioni – Universidad de Granada - ORCID
María Adelina Sánchez Espinosa – Universidad de Granada - ORCID
Abstract
We live in a world where we increasingly witness the crossing of borders by large populations. People are forced by different, often traumatic circumstances, to leave their homes behind in search of a better world. This results in what Susan Stanford Friedman (1998) regards as a transgression of physical and symbolic borders that gives room to complex intersections leading to the creation of very diverse subjectivities. Feminist transnational literary theory aims at providing a framework of analysis for the works produced by women in what we have come to understand as the field of “Transnational Women’s Literature”. Within these grounds, this article aims at fostering critically response-able students by illustrating how or to what extent the concepts of memory and nostalgia can offer new critical insights to the literature of Antiguan-born author Jamaica Kincaid, with special emphasis placed on her process of identity formation. We will develop a feminist close reading of two of her short stories within the At the Bottom of the River collection while we examine our position as situated critics. We will conclude by making a pedagogical proposal for the generation of response-able readings of other short stories within the gender and literature class.
Keywords: Transnational Women’s Literature - Feminist close-reading - response-able criticism - situated knowledges
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