Between Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction and Criticism offers excerpts from novels
and short stories by some of the most important and established contemporary writers:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Rebecca Brown Ana Castillo Michelle Cliff Edwige Danticat Rikki
Ducornet Louise Erdrich Maxine Hong Kingston Ha Jin and Helena María Viramontes. Readers
interested in one or more of these authors and scholars interested in multicultural and
transnational literatures have the opportunity to look more deeply at cultural identity with
regard to home belonging freedom history and memory because the characters embody the
hybrid selves that are part and parcel of an often-conflicting world of cultural codes.
Migrations dislocations displacements exiles and relocations are ever more frequently
embodied in the world and thus through literature. Increased globalization has brought with
it greater cultural hybridity and experiential interrogations of singular identity and accepted
norms. The characters in Between Worlds embody the increasing number of individuals «between
worlds.» Characters move between countries between cultures between languages and across
borders. The literary works included in this anthology like the human beings and experiences
conveyed in these works cross and re-cross geographical and cultural borders. Close readings
of the fiction writers by four contemporary scholars Catherine Rainwater Alwin Jones Belinda
Kong and Lynne Diamond-Nigh also press readers to examine identity politics narrowly
rendered social or political ideologies the American Dream and senses of rootedness or
rootlessness on which survival may rely.
