American Houses: Literary Spaces of Resistance and Desire: Literary Spaces of Resistance and Desire

Already in 1854, Henry David Thoreau had declared in Walden that "Most men appear never to have considered what a house is" (225). Like Thoreau, many other renowned American writers have considered what houses are and, particularly, what houses do, and they have created fictional dwellings that function not only as settings, but as actual central characters in their works. The volume is specifically concerned with the structure, the organization, and the objects inside houses, and argues that the space defined by rooms and their contents influences the consciousness, the imaginations, and the experiences of the humans who inhabit them. Winner of the Spanish Association for American Studies' Javier Coy Award 2022 for best edited volume. Contributors are: Cristina Alsina Rísquez, Rodrigo Andrés, Vicent Cucarella-Ramon, Arturo Corujo, Mar Gallego, Ian Green, Michael Jonik, Wyn Kelley, Cynthia Lytle, Carme Manuel, Paula Martín-Salván, Elena Ortells, Eva Puyuelo-Ureña, Dolores Resano, and Cynthia Stretch. Contents Notes on Contributors 1 American Houses, American Literature 1 Houses: Queer Affiliations and Temporalities 2 The Legacy of the House Divided 3 Troubled Boundaries of the Domestic Space Works Cited Part 1 Houses: Queer Affiliations and Temporalities 2 The House as Alternative to Familial Space and Time in Herman Melville’s “I and My Chimney” 1 The Short Story and its Readings 2 The Chimney and its Relation to Time and Space 3 The Central Chimney as Resistance. Preserving a Queer, Alternative Space 4 Queer Temporalities: Toward before the Familial 5 Conclusion Works Cited 3 Paths Well-Trodden and “Desire Lines” in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House 1 Materiality in Cather’s The Professor’s House: Objects and Houses Works Cited 4 Queering the American Family Home Works Cited Part 2 The Legacy of the House Divided 5 Cape Coast Castle in the Sky: Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the Im/possibility of the American Dream 1 Introduction 2 The Castle and the Convolution of Life and Death 3 The Door of No Return 4 House/keeping and the State of Injury 5 Re/building Home and the American Dream Works Cited 6 The Haunted Plantation: Ghosts, Graves, 1 Time and Place: Dave’s Neckliss 2 “Po’ Sandy” and Spatialized Trauma 3 The Grapevine: Radical Liminality 4 The Literature of Oblivion Works Cited 7 A House is a House is a House: Toni Morrison’s 1 Introduction 2 At the Beginning It Was a House: 124 on Bluestone Road 3 And Then It Was a Home: Home or The Multiple Meanings of a House 4 Conclusion Works Cited 8 The Politics of Affect with/in the African American Mansion in Stephanie Powell Watts’s 1 Introduction: Home, Nation and the Spatial Politics of Affect 2 Spatio-Affective Textualities and Love in No One Is Coming to Save Us 3 Conclusion Works Cited 9 “A Lot More Deadly”: Gender and the Black Spatial Imaginary in U.S. Prison Writings 1 Black Bodies as Prisons, Black Bodies in Prisons: An Introduction 2 “It Takes Places for Racism to Take Place”: Racializing Spaces, Spatializing Races 3 Assata Shakur: On Domesticity and the Racialized Gendered Dimension of Penitentiaries 4 Conclusions Works Cited Part 3 Troubled Boundaries of the Domestic Space 10 Thoreau’s Unhoused 1 Introduction 2 “Our Common Dwelling” 3 Walden’s Unhoused 4 Penobscot Dwellings Works Cited 11 Too Tight for Comfort: Shipboard Distance as the Prerequisite for Personal Intimacy 1 Introduction: A Reader in a Man-of-War 2 Herman Melville’s White-Jacket as a Domestic Inventory 3 Literature Review: The Readers of the Jacket 4 Unexpected Encounters: Exposure vs. Intimacy 5 Hands in Pockets: Crowds, Individuality, and Other Things 6 (Im)personal Clothing: The Material Traces of Identity 7 Moving Out: from the Neversink to the Pequod Works Cited 12 “Maybe There’s Nobody to Shoot”: The Disappearing Landlord in 20th-Century U.S. Fiction Works Cited 13 Woody Guthrie’s House of Earth: A Manifesto in Adobe as a Response to Houselessness 1 Introduction 2 Inspiration for the Novel 3 House of Earth Works Cited 14 The Arrivant in Toni Morrison’s Paradise: Deviation, Iteration, Intersection 1 Arrivants in Paradise 1.1 Mavis and the Reluctant Host 1.2 Gigi, or the Hostile Guest 1.3 Seneca, or the Shadow 1.4 Pallas, or the Mystery 1.5 Connie, or the Hostage 2 Conclusion Works Cited 15 “A House at Odds with Itself”: Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered Works Cited 16 Afterword: In a Fictional House Index "Already in 1854, Henry David Thoreau had declared in Walden that "Most men appear never to have considered what a house is" (225). Like Thoreau, many other renowned American writers have considered what houses are and, particularly, what houses do, and they have created fictional dwellings that function not only as settings, but as actual central characters in their works. The volume is specifically concerned with the structure, the organization, and the objects inside houses, and argues that the space defined by rooms and their contents influences the consciousness, the imaginations, and the experiences of the humans who inhabit them"-- Provided by publisher