Rocky Mountain Review
75-2 Fall 2021
CONTENTS
Guidelines for Submission for Articles and Book Reviews
Articles
Articles are in alphabetical order according to the name of the author.
Gabriela A. Buitrón Vera, Binghamton University, SUNY
Cracks as Portals of Change: A Reading of Disasters in Juan Villoro’s Novel Materia dispuesta (1997)
This analysis argues that concepts of nation and masculinity are necessarily reformulated because natural disasters are portrayed as symbolic ruptures that can enable either a social transformation or the reaffirmation of the status quo. When a return to the status quo occurs, hegemonic Mexican masculine models are portrayed as barriers to meaningful social change. This argument draws from Sedgwick (1985), Bartra (1987), Connell ([2005]1993), Gutman ([1996] 2006) and Irwin (2003) to expand the analysis of monolithic masculinities as obstacles to overcoming disaster through close reading of how the novel’s protagonist Mauricio navigates disaster and concludes that hegemonic narratives of masculinity become fatal to healing a nation amidst calamity because those discourses/performances truncate a praxis of solidarity.
Alexander M. Cárdenas, Colorado College
Lenguaje, percepciones y transformaciones del cuerpo en Wasabi de Alan Pauls y Lorde de João Gilberto Noll
Este ensayo explora desde una perspectiva fenomenológica las novelas Wasabi (1994) y Lorde (2004) y propone que la materialidad del cuerpo humano se define como una plataforma a través de la cual los protagonistas solucionan sus conflictos y los enigmas planteados. En efecto, se conocen a sí mismos, construyen relaciones significativas con otras personas, perciben y forman parte de su entorno, y solucionan sus problemas a través de la materialidad de su cuerpo. Mientras que estas novelas presentan conflictos ligeramente diferentes, la solución de los conflictos temáticos en ambas se logra a través del cuerpo. El
análisis de esta existencia corporal toma en consideración tres tipos de relación: (1) el protagonista y su cuerpo, (2) el cuerpo del protagonista y los cuerpos de los demás personajes, y (3) el cuerpo del protagonista y su entorno.
Quan Manh Ha and Mia Tompkins, University of Montana
“The truth is memory has not forgotten us”: Memory, Identity, and Storytelling in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
This article examines the intersection of memory, identity, and storytelling in the highly acclaimed Vietnamese American novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. The novel challenges the American myths of inclusion and equal opportunity for all by critiquing United States’ historical amnesia and imperialistic historiography. To Vietnamese American members of the 1.5 generations, memory can never be a choice because only through historical remembrance and self-narrativity can they construct their diasporic identity and establish alliance with the previous generations.
Victoria Vygodskaia-Rust, Independent Scholar
German Mother, the Mother of Germany: Visions of Patriotism, Modernity, and Motherhood in Ina Seidel’s Das Wunschkind (1930)
In the decade following WW I, conservative German women writers celebrated picturesque landscapes and tapped into mysticism, religion, and national history. While interested in women’s contributions to society and literature, they pointedly avoided the social and cultural realities of the Weimar Republic. In contrast to liberal urban writers who commented on changing sexual relationships, working women, and controversial issues such as abortion, Seidel contemptuously disdained contemporary trends, instead advocating a spirit of cultural conservatism and restoration of traditional values. Her well-received Heimatsroman echoed contemporary tensions between seductive femininity and nurturing womanhood, between racism and patriotism, and between the ideas of women as professionals, spiritual mothers, and guardians of history and nationality. Although placed in the early nineteenth century, its sensitive portrayal of female experiences during the German Wars of Liberation alluded to the Weimar Republic’s debate about the notorious New Woman and echoed the visions of emancipation promoted by the German bourgeois women’s movement.
Sterling Keynote 2021
The full text of the 2021 Sterling Keynote Address by José Ignacio Suárez is provided in print form here since RMMLA’s 2021 convention was held online due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.
José Ignacio Suárez, Emeritus Professor, University of Northern Colorado.
“I Love the Poorly Educated”
Reviews
Reviews are in alphabetical order according to the name of the author reviewed.
On tourne! French Language and Culture through Film, by Véronique Anover and Rémi Fournier Lansoni.
Reviewer: Alexandria J. Ekler
Social Justice and International Education. Research, Practice, and Perspectives, by LaNitra M. Berger, editor.
Reviewer: Daniel C. Villanueva
Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning, by Robert J. Blake and Gabriel Guillén.
Reviewer: Alexandria J. Ekler
Dark Mirror: African Americans and the Federal Writers’ Project, by J. J. Butts.
Reviewer: Fredrick Douglass Dixon
Dreams and Dialogues in Dylan´s Time Out of Mind, by Graley Herren.
Reviewer: Alfonso Livianos-Domínguez
Russian From Novice High to Intermediate, by Anna S. Kudyma.
Reviewer: Maria Mikolchak
Walter Scott at 250: Looking Forward, by Caroline McCracken-Flesher and Matthew Wickman, editors.
Reviewer: Elisabeth Kinsey
Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, by Lissette López Szwydky.
Reviewer: Joy Landeira
Dictionnaire Jean Renoir. Du cinéaste à l’écrivain, by Philippe De Vita.
Reviewer: Marie-Line Brunet
Digital Media in Urban China: Locating Guangzhou, by Wilfred Yang Wang.
Reviewer: Lishu Tang
Savage West: The Life and Fiction of Thomas Savage, by O. Alan Weltzien.
Reviewer: Lucien Darjeun Meadows
CONTRIBUTORS
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