Papers by Izabella Kimak
European Journal of American Studies, 2023
is a Polish American poet and fiction writer, whose writing has appeared in Rattle, Ontario Revie... more is a Polish American poet and fiction writer, whose writing has appeared in Rattle, Ontario Review, North American Review, and other journals in the US and abroad. His recent memoir Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded (2016), which won the Eric Hoffer Award for most thought-provoking book in 2017, comprises poems and personal essays about his parents' experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. He is also the author of the Hank and Marvin mystery novels and a columnist for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in the USA. Guzlowski's most recent books of poems are Small Talk (2022), Mad Monk Ikkyu (2021), and True Confessions (2019). His novel Retreat: A Love Story (2021) is an account of two German lovers separated by war. John Guzlowski sat down with Izabella Kimak to talk about his literary career and the impact that his experience as a 1.5-generation immigrant has had on his writing. Guzlowski was brought to the United States in 1951 by his Displaced Persons parents and grew up in the area of Humboldt Park in Chicago, the setting of his Hank and Marvin mystery novels. Izabella Kimak: I want to start with the basics, that is your self-identification. In many minority literatures there have been discussions about how authors identify themselves or how they should identify themselves. Do you consider yourself a Polish American writer, an American writer, or perhaps just a writer? John Guzlowski: It's an interesting question. I have a friend who lives in Vancouver, Canada, and I sent him a piece this morning that I had written for somebody else about being a Polish American writer. He asked why I consider myself a Polish American writer. Why shouldn't I just consider myself an American writer? And I've been thinking about it this morning. I never started out to be a Polish American writer. When I first started thinking about writing and wanting to write, what I wanted to
The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020, 2022
EXtREme 21 Going Beyond in Post-Millennial North American Literature and Culture
In this article we look at three recent films–Native Son (2019, dir. Rashid Johnson, based on Ric... more In this article we look at three recent films–Native Son (2019, dir. Rashid Johnson, based on Richard Wright’s 1940 novel), Widows (2018, dir. Steve McQueen, based on a 1983 TV series), and The Hate U Give (2018, dir. George Tillman Jr., based on a book by Angie Thomas)–by Black directors that showcase the interactions between Blacks and whites in an American urban milieu. We argue that the setting of two of these films–Native Son and Widows–in Chicago, with The Hate U Give being set in a fictional urban setting bearing a strong resemblance to the Windy City, serves to articulate the continuing racial divisions of American cities in the twenty-first century. The three films show that the fossilization of the divide between Black and white districts inevitably leads to outbreaks of racial violence.
Polish Journal for American Studies
This essay constitutes an attempt at reading Bharati Mukherjee’s 2011 novel, Miss New India, thro... more This essay constitutes an attempt at reading Bharati Mukherjee’s 2011 novel, Miss New India, through the prism of spatial locations depicted in it. Unlike many of the texts in the late South Asian American author’s oeuvre, which depict migration from the East to the West, Miss New India is located exclusively within South Asia. This notwithstanding, the novel focuses on the impact the West used to and continues to exert on the East. I would like to argue that through her depictions of places and non-places of Bangalore-the novel’s primary location-Mukherjee points to the spatial interconnectedness of the East and the West as well as to the temporal interconnectedness of the colonial past and postcolonial, late-capitalist present.
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2019
This article constitutes an analysis of the depiction of houses in Jonathan Lethem's 2003 novel T... more This article constitutes an analysis of the depiction of houses in Jonathan Lethem's 2003 novel The Fortress of Solitude, universally labeled a novel of gentrification. It is my contention that despite being criticized for its alleged celebration of the process the text nevertheless paints a more nuanced picture of gentrification. It does so through the depiction of houses-t he titular brownstones of this essay-t hat function both as a synecdoche for a larger neighborhood or community that they are situated in and as a reflection of the dynamics of the family units that occupy them.
Spaces of Expression and Repression in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture, 2017
A b s t r a c t. In numerous immigrant narratives by South Asian American women writers, the proc... more A b s t r a c t. In numerous immigrant narratives by South Asian American women writers, the process of immigration is construed as the crossing of a line, or of several lines, to be more specific. The act of crossing the geographical line of the border precedes the crossing of more meta-phorical boundaries, for example those between the two cultural scenarios operative in the writ-ers' native and adopted cultures. In the process, yet another metaphorical line is drawn between first-and second-generation immigrants, two groups that inevitably experience immigration in two completely divergent ways. The purpose of this article is to discuss several literary texts based on the construction of a literal or metaphorical line written by first-and second-generation South Asian American women writers (namely, Meena Alexander, Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Jhumpa Lahiri) to map the different standpoints from which first-and second-generation writers explore the issue of migration. This analysis will be situated in the context of what Meena Alexander, a first-generation South Asian American poet and novelist, terms " fault lines " when she writes in her memoir: " In Manhattan, I am a fissured thing, a body crossed by fault lines " (Fault Lines 182). The concept of the geological fault line serves as a powerful metaphor for the fractures and discontinuities inherent in the process of immigration that will be discussed in this article.
Polish Journal for American Studies 8 (2014): 149-166
Visuality and Vision in American Literature, 2014
In Other Words: Dialogizing Postcoloniality, Race, and Ethnicity, 2012
(Mis)Reading America: American Dreams, Fictions and Illusions, 2011
Book Reviews by Izabella Kimak
Reviews for The European Journal of American Studies
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Papers by Izabella Kimak
Book Reviews by Izabella Kimak