Ibarraran, Amaia, Martin Simonson, and David Rio, eds.: A Neglected West: Contemporary Approaches to Western American Literature. London: Portal, 2012.
No place has probably been more fantasized and imagined than the American West. No territory has probably been more essentialized and generally defined than the American West. No people have probably been more (mis)represented and stereotyped than the American Westerners. No “state of mind” has probably been more shared and acknowledged than that of the American West. The conception of the title of this volume, The Neglected West, originates from the assumption of the existence of a West, as described and imagined previously, but introduces the idea of the existence of other Wests, many Wests, different Wests, neglected Wests. The book has been conceived and designed as a compilation of heterogeneous academic works that attempt to fill some of the voids that the western myth has created. It provides a channel for the many and varied ways that the West has been experienced by individuals, retold by them, and eventually redefined through literature and culture in general. It aims to offer an open, dynamic vision and revision of the modes of expression that have been traditionally linked to the West and the “western” as a valid formula for its portrayal. The volume emphasizes other ways of experiencing the Movement West, its settling and the West itself, devoid of the traditionally accepted, normative, male, cowboy, white experience. Overall, these essays and their authors seek to convey an international, contemporary and revisionist vision/version of the West. One that proves that the cowboy was never alone and his voice was never the only voice.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Places: Existing and Non-existing, by Bernardo Atxaga (Translation by Monika Madinabeitia)
Introduction
The Cowboy Was Never Alone, by Amaia Ibarraran
Part I: Other Forms of Expression
A Way in the Middle: Phyllis Barber’s Questions Need No Answer...Or Maybe They Do, by Angel Chaparro Sainz
“At Odds”: Diaries, Memoirs, and the Illusion of the Authentic Westerner, by Linda K. Karell
Sculpture in Motion: The Art of Storytelling in the Work of Leslie Marmon Silko and N. Scott Momaday
by Mirja Lobnik
Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing: Speaking and Telling “in the used to be,” by Jennifer L. Vala
Part II: Other Western Experiences
Empowering Spaces, In-corporating (Alter)Native Resistance, by Maria Felisa López Liquete
A Different West: Two American Writers’ Response to the Western Frontier, by Olga González Calvo
A Portrait of Death in El Paso-Juárez Border: Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood, by Andrea Perales Fernández de Gamboa
Representations of the Diaspora in Basque Children and Young People’s Literature, by Mari Jose Olaziregi
Anatomy of a Gunfighter: A Reflection upon Roland of Gilead and The Dark Tower Saga, by Luis Diaz Pulido
Part III: Other “Other” Identities
The Western Hero in the American Frontier: Myth vs. Reality, by Maria Jesús de Teresa Paredes
“The Best Bread I Ever Ate:” Male Housekeepers and Women Writers of the Frontier, by Cathryn Halverson
Playing Tough, Queering the Myth: Cowboy Imagery in American Gay Culture and Drama, by Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz
Appendix
Against All Odds, by Frances Beckner Thompson
Notes on Contributors
Index
http://education.portaleditions.com/libro.php?libro=6