Routledge Children of Globalization: Diasporic Coming-of-Age Novels in Germany, England, and the United States (Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature)

Children of Globalization is the first book-length exploration of contemporary Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels in the context of globalized and de facto multicultural societies. Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels subvert the horizon of expectations of the originating and archetypal form of the genre, the traditional Bildungsroman, which encompasses the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen, and illustrates middle-class, European, "enlightened," and overwhelmingly male protagonists who become accommodated citizens, workers, and spouses whom the readers should imitate. Conversely, Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels have manifold ways of defining youth and adulthood. The culturally-hybrid protagonists, often experiencing intersectional oppression due to their identities of race, gender, class, or sexuality, must negotiate what it means to become adults in their own families and social contexts, at times being undocumented or otherwise unable to access full citizenship, thus enabling complex and variegated formative processes that beg the questions of nationhood and belonging in increasingly globalized societies worldwide. Review "Children of Globalization provides a refreshing road map for understating the contemporary coming of age genre or bildungsroman from a diasporic global perspective, centralizing the role of race, gender and migration. Putting canonical texts like Austen and Dickens in conversation with Herrera and Thomas frames self-determination as a product of various colonialisms that span the globe." Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, Acting Professor of English, Emory University About the Author Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo was born in Mexico City. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Purdue University and has been a Lynn and Fulbright Fellow. Recent publications include “Geografía humana de la colonia Roma,” “Germanness Redefined in the Poetry of Zafer Şenocak and Zehra Çirak,” and, in the forthcoming book Memory in German Romanticism, "The Forgotten Poet in Heinrich Heine’s Late Poetry."