Table of Contents

Introduction: The Politics and Ethics of Jewish American Literature and Criticism Part I: Pluralism, Race, and Religion 1. Portnoy's Complaint: It's about Race, Not Sex (Even the Sex Is about Race) 2. Re-Reading Cynthia Ozick: Pluralism, Postmodernism, and the Multicultural Encounter 3. The New, New Pluralism: Religion, Community, and Secularity in Allegra Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls Part II: Recognition, Rights, and Responsibility 4. Recognition and Effacement in Lore Segal's Her First American 5. Responsibility Unveiled: Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul 6. Globalization's Complaint: Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan and the Culture of Culture Epilogue: Less Absurdistan, More Boyle Heights

About the Author

Dean J. Franco is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing.

Reviews

"Franco departs from prevailing literary scholarship interpreting Jewish writing within the parameters of Euro-American Jewish history and culture and also from standard multicultural rejectionism to analyze selected texts by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman, Lore Segal, Tony Kushner, and Gary Shteyngart through multicultural and postcolonial lenses... Sensitive to the exclusion of Jewish American writers from multicultural curricula and criticism ... , Franco moves beyond the dominant critical paradigms to persuasively argue for the inclusion of Jewish writers in American ethnic studies."-Choice (1 December 2012) "Race, Rights & Recognition comments on issues that were pressing in the 1960s, have remained so through the twentieth century, and will continue to be important in the future... Franco presents invaluable persepectives in his analyses that preserve academic quality while remaining passionate and often personal in their tone. His book is not only thought provoking but also meticulously-structured and therefore suitable for both students well-versed in literary theory and scholars alike."-Attila Lenart-Muszka, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (Fall 2014) "In the morally strenuous and intellectually capacious Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco takes the study of Jewish American writing to a new level of sophistication and seriousness. Beginning with writing that is solidly in the Jewish American literary canon-including Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick-he extends his survey to literature that challenges the very boundaries of Jewish America, such as the work of Tony Kushner and Gary Shteyngart. This book ranges well beyond the terms in which Jewish writing has traditionally been read-ethnic self-assertion and ethnoreligious questing after 'identity'-to encompass serious engagement with political history on one hand and political philosophy on the other."-Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan, author of The Temple of Culture: Assimilation and Anti-Semitism in Literary Anglo-America "Dean J. Franco's innovative and interesting readings of Jewish American writers show them closely engaged with the racial and cultural politics of the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. Race, Rights, and Recognition contains genuine 'aha!' moments of inspired interpretation and sleuthing. This rewarding book's thick literary history and contextualization advances the argument that Jewish American literature has been deeply attentive to the history of African American civil rights and cultural nationalism."-Christopher D. Douglas, University of Victoria, author of A Genealogy of Literary Multiculturalism