Rewriting Homeless Identity: Writing as Coping in an Urban Homeless Community focuses on the identities of homeless writers, with initially limited or no specialized training in writing, at a homeless community church. Through an ethnographic, two-year study, author Jeremy Godfrey hosted and participated in weekly writing workshops. He also participated in the founding of a street newspaper within that community. This book shows Godfrey’s experiences in leading writing workshops and how they promoted self-exploration within this community. Students of the workshop negotiated their unique, individual writing personas during the study. Those personas were often coping with their experiences on the streets. More importantly, the writers viewed those experiences as central to their writing processes. Much like the setting of the workshop at an urban, non-denominational, community church, the writers honed their coping tactics through conversational and performance-driven writings. Rewriting Homeless Identity highlights those writing samples and the conversations with homeless authors of the samples in relation to identity and a sense of growth.

Black Women Writing and Identity is an exciting work by one of the most imaginative and acute writers around. The book explores a complex and fascinating set of interrelated issues, establishing the significance of such wide-ranging subjects as: * re-mapping, re-naming and cultural crossings * tourist ideologies and playful world travelling * gender, heritage and identity * African women's writing and resistance to domination * marginality, effacement and decentering * gender, language and the politics of location Carole Boyce-Davies is at the forefront of attempts to broaden the discourse surrounding the representation of and by black women and women of colour. Black Women Writing and Identity represents an extraordinary achievement in this field, taking our understanding of identity, location and representation to new levels.

This dissertation interrogates the nostalgic story, which has been a favorite in the Western literary tradition since Homer's paradigmatic tale of nostalgia, the Odyssey. Interpreting nostalgia etymologically to mean the longing to return home, this dissertation suggests that the traditional story of nostalgia may be alienating to woman who has historically remained, physically as well as psychically, in the home, and it argues that certain contemporary women writers are critiquing and rewriting the nostalgic story. Chapter One, "The Subject of Desire in Feminist Theory," situates this dissertation within the context of current issues in feminist theory, namely, the problem of defining woman. Chapter Two, "There's No place like Home: Toward a Psychoanalytic Theory of Nostalgia," traces the pattern of Oedipal desire in popular narratives of nostalgia, The Wizard of Oz, and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, in order to show how alienating such narratives may be to a woman. Chapter Three, "Nostalgia and Marilynne Robinson's Discontent," discusses Marilynne Robinson's revision of the nostalgic story in her novel Housekeeping, and Chapter Four, "Longing to Long: Kathy Acker and the Politics of Pain," discusses Kathy Acker's representation of the pain that is caused by woman's alienation from the traditional nostalgic story.

In the aftermath of September 11, donations to the poor and homeless have declined while ordinances against begging and sleeping in public have increased. The increased security of public spaces has been matched by a quest for increased security and surveillance of immigrants. In this groundbreaking study, Kathleen R. Arnold explores homelessness in terms of the globalization of the economy, national identity, and citizenship. She argues that domestic homelessness and conditions of statelessness, such as refugees, exiles, and poor immigrants, are defined and addressed in similar ways by the political sphere, in such a manner that each of these groups are subjected to policies that perpetuate their exclusion. Drawing on such authors as Freud, Marx, Foucault, Derrida, Lévinas, and Agamben, Arnold argues for a radical politics of homelessness based on extending hospitality and the toleration of difference.

How does one imagine plurality? How does one find new strategies for writing diversity and polyphony? How does one read the most challenging creative and critical works of the present time? This bi-lingual volume of twelve English and eight French papers proposes to breach linguistic critical frontiers by placing careful analysis of texts from different language traditions in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural dialogue. In this collection of theoretically and politically aware close readings of contemporary cultural production, the focus of analysis rests on the multiple and complex global convergences and interferences of cultural influences. The collection foregrounds the work of innovative writers who seek to express the ungraspable presence of cultural “newness” at the same time as situating themselves in the richness of detail of local lives. This volume, most particularly, finds a balance of critical approach between the everyday attempts at negotiation and survival, and the insight brought to the reader by postcolonial, syncretic and feminist theoretical analysis.

We identify with our environment as children conforming to our parents' beliefs, to the world, or to another person to identify who we are only to find deception and emptiness. In her book, The Rewrite, Nicole Johnson shares her personal journey that exposes the real enemy and the truth of where our real identity is found. She sheds light on how we can be delivered from bondage and be set free to walk in God's grace, forgiveness, and abundant life. She shares her brokenness from abuse, trauma, anger, defeats, and failures that lead her to a life of homelessness. Her remarkable journey will offer a powerful and unique program to help other women that have walked in the same shoes, to be empowered and set free. This book is for the outcast, the abused, the broken, and the homeless, as one woman shares the journey of God "rewriting" her destiny. She shares the purpose for her pain, as she surrendered to God and continues to overcome the deceptions of the enemy, finding her true identity in Christ.

Western society has become increasingly diverse, but stereotypes still persist in the public discourse. This volume explores how people who have a marked status in society - among them Travellers, teenage mothers, homeless people - manage their identity in response to these stereotypes.

Global Identities in Transit: The Ethics and Politics of Representation in World Literatures and Cultures explores the myriad aspects of identity formation and identity representation in an increasingly globalized world. Covering a variety of cultural and historical experiences in addition to several texts of world literatures, the contributors discuss the configurations of transnationality and transculturality in our postcolonial and globalized world. Acknowledging that nationality, ethnicity, gender, and class are continually shaped by historical processes, the contributors hone in on the ways that the increase in mobility via migration, diaspora, and exile render identities always in transit In the face of structural inequalities and social injustices predominant in this context, the chapters reflect on the moral obligations of representation. This collection will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and world literature.

In this book, Shelby Chan examines the relationship between theatre translation and identity construction against the sociocultural background that has led to the popularity of translated theatre in Hong Kong. A statistical analysis of the development of translated theatre is presented, establishing a correlation between its popularity and major socio-political trends. When the idea of home, often assumed to be the basis for identity, becomes blurred for historical, political and sociocultural reasons, people may come to feel "homeless" and compelled to look for alternative means to develop the Self. In theatre translation, Hongkongers have found a source of inspiration to nurture their identity and expand their "home" territory. By exploring the translation strategies of various theatre practitioners in Hong Kong, the book also analyses a number of foreign plays and their stage renditions. The focus is not only on the textual and discursive transfers but also on the different ways in which the people of Hong Kong perceive their identity in the performances.

In this study, Henao considers the ways in which the narratives of Julia lvarez, Rosario Ferr, and Ana Lydia Vega challenge traditional representations of Spanish Caribbean women. She explores the connections these works establish between women's identities and the colonial cultures of Puerto Rico,