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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Virginia Commonwealth University

Journal

2009

Identity

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Chang-Rae Lee's A Gesture Lite: The Recuperation Of Identity, Matthew Miller Jan 2009

Chang-Rae Lee's A Gesture Lite: The Recuperation Of Identity, Matthew Miller

Ethnic Studies Review

In Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, the elderly, wellrespected and fastidious Franklin "Doc" Hata begins an introspective journey toward a revitalized and reimagined identity. For Lee, this journey affords the chance to address ethnicity and immigration under a unique transnational context. The novel chronicles how an identity can be recuperated (i.e., healed) through personal and cultural reconnections to the body and to memory. I purposefully use the word "recuperate" in both the traditional and theoretical senses. "Recuperation" results from Hata's moving back into his past to grow forward in self. Simultaneously, he "heals" his self, physically and psychologically, from various …


Sacred Hoop Dreams: Basketball In The Work Of Sherman Alexie, David S. Goldstein Jan 2009

Sacred Hoop Dreams: Basketball In The Work Of Sherman Alexie, David S. Goldstein

Ethnic Studies Review

The game of basketball serves as a fitting metaphor for the conflicts and tensions of life. It involves both cooperation and competition, selflessness and ego. In the hands of a gifted writer like Sherman Alexie, those paradoxes become even deeper and more revealing. In his short story collections, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World, his debut novel, Reservation Blues, and his recent young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie uses basketball to explore the ironies of American Indian reservation life and the tensions between traditional lifeways …