Projections of America: Negotiating Boundaries of State and Self

Browder's book examines the phenomenon of ethnic impersonation in American history, from slave narratives written by white abolitionists, to Wild West Shows, to former Klansman Asa Carter's 1976 re-invention of himself as novelist and Cherokee storyteller Forrest Carter. Browder proposes that ethnic impersonation offered the opportunity for class mobility, inclusion in American citizenship, and escape from brutal, painful and sometimes shameful pasts. Eperjesi analyzes canonical American literature (Emerson, Norris, Jack London) and more recent cultural texts (Maxine Hong Kingston, Camilla Benolirao Griggers and Sari Lluch Dalena's 2001 documentary Memories of a Forgotten War) from a post-colonial/New Americanist stance to show the material and discursive relationship between the US and the Pacific (Japan, China, Korea, Hawaii) and expose the role of discourse in American imperial activity in the Pacific.