Cultural haunting: ghosts and ethnicity in recent American literature

Abstract

Ghost stories in various forms have been a part of popular literature for centuries, from Shakespeare to Dickens to Faulkner. Over past 25 years, a resurgence of haunting plots has occurred in American literature. In this text, Kathleen Brogan makes case that this recent preoccupation with ghosts stems not from a lingering interest in Gothic themes but instead from a whole new genre in American literature that she calls the story of cultural haunting. Examining Louise Erdich's Tracks, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban, Brogan argues that modern ghost stories offer a way for minority writers to come to terms with their lost cultural identities. At heart of this process, she contends, is experience of mourning as that form of memory determined by an awareness of a break with past. While conscious of cultural differences among these haunted tales of slavery, colonization and immigation, author demonstrates that they all function similarly: to re-create ethnic identity by imaginatively recovering a collective history that in many cases has been fragmented or erased. Her readings show how specific histories and local meanings support pan-ethnic genre she has defined. The book suggests that modern stories of haunting reflect increased emphasis on ethnic and racial differentiation in American society over past 30 years. The ghosts found in contemporary American literature lead us to heart of our nation's discourse about multiculturalism and ethnic identity.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 189 citations exist upstream.