Look Away! presents work by respected scholars in comparative literature, American studies, and Latin American studies. The contributors analyze how writers—including the Martinican Edouard Glissant, the Cuban-American Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and the Trinidad-born, British V. S. Naipaul—have engaged with the southern United States. They explore William Faulkner’s role in Latin American thought and consider his work in relation to that of Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Many essays re-examine major topics in southern U.S. culture—such as race, slavery, slave resistance, and the legacies of the past—through the lens of postcolonial theory and postmodern geography. Others discuss the South in relation to the U.S.–Mexico border. Throughout the volume, the contributors consistently reconceptualize U.S. southern culture in a way that acknowledges its postcolonial status without diminishing its distinctiveness.

Contributors. Jesse Alemán, Bob Brinkmeyer, Debra Cohen, Deborah Cohn, Michael Dash, Leigh Anne Duck, Wendy Faris, Earl Fitz, George Handley, Steve Hunsaker, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Dane Johnson, Richard King, Jane Landers, John T. Matthews, Stephanie Merrim, Helen Oakley, Vincent Pérez, John-Michael Rivera, Scott Romine, Jon Smith, Ilan Stavans, Philip Weinstein, Lois Parkinson Zamora

Jon Smith is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Alabama.

Deborah Cohn is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of History and Memory in the Two Souths: Recent Southern and Spanish American Fiction.