Sex and Nation in Transatlantic Literatures

"Staging a vital counter-narrative to global nationalist discourses, this book explores how 20th and 21st-century postcolonial literatures criticize hetero-normative definitions of nationhood, weaving a trans-national and trans-Atlantic network of influences despite the pronounced geopolitical and cultural differences. With wide geographical scope and a comparative approach, Szczeszak-Brewer delves into the metaphorical currency of male impotence, sexual aggression and gender-nonconforming characters in nationalist narratives from Ireland, the U.S, Poland, France, Britain, South Africa and Senegal, in the work of writers such as James Joyce, Witold Gombrowicz, Jean Toomer, Bessie Head, Zoèe Wicomb, JM Coetzee, Andrea Levy, Patrick McCabe, David Diop"--