Gender-Mixing Roles,Gender-Crossing Roles,and the Sexuality of Transgendered Roles

Fischer, Michael M. J. and Mehdi Abedi. Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. xxxvi + 564 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $49.75 cloth, $23.50 paper.

Bradburd, Daniel. Ambiguous Relations: Kin, Class, and Conflict among Komachi Pastoralists. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. xxix + 240 pp. including notes, references, and index. $29.95 cloth.     

Review Article: Toynbee,McNeill, and the Myth of History

WILLIAM H. MCNEILL. Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. viii, 346. $24.95 (US); Reviewed by Gordon Martel

C.T. MCINTIRE and MARVIN PERRY, eds. Toynbee: Reappraisals. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. Pp. viii, 254. $40.00 (CAN). Reviewed by Gordon Martel     

Edna O'Brien and narrative diaspora space

Given the persistent presence of migration in the work of Edna O'Brien, it is surprising how marginal a theme it is in critiques of her work. This article explores how questions of diaspora have reached a renewed level of depth and intensity in her novel The Light of Evening (2006) and the related short story ‘My Two Mothers’ (2011). Looking, in particular, at how letters play a central role in the relationships of three generations of Irish women across three countries, it analyses how issues of mother(land), diaspora and belonging are mediated through migrant fiction. It draws on the work of Avtar Brah and Paul Ricoeur to argue that, along with related forms of textuality within O'Brien's oeuvre, letters represent a ‘narrative diaspora space’ which illuminates the relationship between mothers, daughters and writing in Irish migrant experience.