Multicultural Questions / Family Matters in Contemporary Fiction

This book effects a radical re-adjustment in the interpretation of a representative selection of ethnic minority women novelists from Canada and Britain. The argument put forward constitutes a significant critique of an extensive mode of criticism in the academy, and of reception in the public sphere at large, that reads contemporary fiction by writers of immigrant or ethnic background primarily through the prism of politically motivated discourses against forms of silencing, racism and oppression. Without dissenting from this general account, the author argues that readings focused in this way on large historical injustices constantly overlook the more subtle interest at the heart of these fictions. Indeed, conventionally political readings not only miss, but run significantly counter to, the moral thrust of the works. Through close reading of the texts the author advances her own interpretation of these literary works as practical contributions to an ethical understanding being developed contemporaneously by philosophical thinkers - contributions that highlight small-scale, familial interactions, and an ethics built on care.