• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1211-1234
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• 2010

Mule Bone (1931), Zora Neale Hurston's collaboration with Langston Hughes, has been credited as the 'first' attempted by African Americans to create black folk comedy. The proposed research is driven from a question to the recent scholarship's tacit consent on such historic importance imposed on the play. This paper suggests a possibility that De Turkey and De Law (1930), Hurston's edition of the collaboration work, could be the truly first attempt in the tradition of American black folk comedy. By illuminating a series of historical moments in which Hurston first expressed her dream for writing a real black folk comedy that would be a really new departure in the African American drama, then collaborated with Hughes on the dream play project, and eventually quit the collaborationship due to artistic dispute with Hughes, this paper explains why Hughes edition Mule Bone came to remain 'unfinished' and, more importantly, fall short of Hurston's original goal and expectation from the collaboration. On the other hand, this paper sheds light on the significance of often-ignored Hurston's edition De Turkey and De Law by demonstrating how this play, compared to Mule Bone, fulfills her original idea of black folk comedy in terms of contents and themes compared with Mule Bone. Adding to the knowledge about little known behind story related to the Mule Bone controversy and the subsequent birth of the two different editions of the Hurston-Hushes collaboration project, supplementing the dearth of the related research with a critical comparison of the two editions, and discussing the validity of Hurston's edition as the real sense of black folk comedy, this paper argues for the necessity of reconsidering the origin of the mentioned genre. This paper finally concludes that De Turkey and De Law, replacing Mule Bone, deserves a right to be truly the first American black folk comedy genre in the sense that it was completed and copyrighted three months earlier than Mule Bone and that, more importantly, it cherished the original aim and artistic vision of black folk comedy Hurston first planned and expected through the collaboration with Hughes.

• American Studies
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.111-136
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• 2020

This paper aims to reveal how the fundamental assumptions informing race and gender issues in contemporary society have remained relatively unchanged by examining how such issues pervade Octavia Butler's Kindred. By exploring the protagonist of the novel, Dana's actions in her present (1976 Los Angeles) and the antebellum past in addition to her maternal ancestor, Alice's actions, a clear picture of contemporary and antebellum views of race and gender is provided. Particularly interesting are the reactions of the characters to Dana's and Alice's interracial relationships and the circumstances on the Weylin plantation. By juxtaposing the two times, a deeper commentary on the lack of fundamental change in the present treatment of such issues is then revealed. Furthermore, a potential path to addressing this lack of change is suggested by Butler through Dana and Kevin's successful interracial relationship.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.193-209
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• 2014

Writers in England's colonies and former colonies have long struggled with the advantages and disadvantages of employing the language of the colonizer for their creative work, an issue that today reaches beyond the older imperial trade routes in the era of "global English." Creative writers in widely disparate locations are now using global English to their advantage, with what can be described as post-postcolonial strategies. This essay explores the politics of global English, beginning with a satiric dictionary of "Strine" (Australian English) from 1965, and then looking back at the mid-1960s debate at Makerere University between Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Chinua Achebe, in which Achebe famously asserted the importance of remaking English for hi own purposes. The essay then discusses early linguistic experiments by Rudyard Kipling, who became the world's first truly global writer in the 1880s and 1890s and developed a range of strategies for conveying local experience to a global audience. The essay then turns to two contemporary examples: a comic pastiche of Kipling-and of Kiplingese-by the contemporary Tibetan writer Jamyang Norbu, who deploys "Babu English" and the legacy of British rule against Chinese encroachment in Tibet; and, finally, the Korean-American internet group Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, who interweave African-American English with North Korean political rhetoric to hilariously subversive effect.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.265-284
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• 2011

This paper examines how Sedgwick makes a political allegory of founding the nation in domestic terms in The Linwoods (1835). Set in the Revolutionary period, The Linwoods is a historical fiction reconstructed by the writer in order to diagnose currently controversial issues. In this aspect, Sedgwick's interest in history is genealogical in Foucaudian sense. Foucault's genealogical method provides a way of recuperating a part of history hidden, submerged, obliterated by the official history. Seen in a genealogical perspective, the story of the Linwoods can be viewed as a political allegory in order to explore political conflicts of Sedgwick's own day. Faced with the threat of national disunion presented in the Nullification Crisis of sectional conflicts and divisions, Sedgwick attempts to provide a fictional solution to the first serious challenge to the U. S. Constitution. Going back to the times around the American Revolution, Sedgwick emphasizes how strenuously the American Constitution of America was formed as the outcome of the war against the tyranny of Britain, and how the Union was made on the basis of the cooperation between the States. By posing a contrast of political positions between family members, Sedgwick imagines a family/nation that allows diverse political positions. The conclusion of a diversity of marriages between man and woman who agree to be united after overcoming their differences in political affiliations seems to show her conservative proclivity to support the Union. However, by emphasizing the principles of freedom and equality represented by the significant role of Isabella and Rose, an African-American slave, in the victory of the American Revolution, Sedgwick also supports the spirit of the Jacksonian American democracy.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.295-314
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• 2014

Flannery O'Connor's stories have garnered critical attention for her religious views. Thus, the interpretation of violence in her fiction has been mainly associated with salvation in her characters. Nonetheless, O'Connor was aware of the historical facts surrounding white supremacist activities in the American South. In its revenge narrative, O'Connor's story "The Displaced Person" (1955) unveils subtle layers of politics from the Ku Klux Klan as well as her white characters' views of race and immigrants. O'Connor used a voice of reserve due to her minority position as woman and Catholic. Although she was a white female, she lived within repressive Southern religiosity. Racism prevailed beneath Southern chauvinism and patriotism. The conflicts in the South display the violent aspects of the "Invisible White Supreme Empire." After the World Wars, devalued whiteness elicited atrocities against socially upward mobile African Americans, foreigners and Catholics. This article explores the convoluted issues of racial hierarchy, miscegenation, and xenophobic reactions in the South.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-29
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• 2018

Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup, published in 2001, well shows how the social issues have been changed in a way to reflect the South African society which is more complicated in the post-apartheid era. Examining the two different geographical territories between Johannesburg, South Africa and an unnamed nation in Middle East, putting aside the domestic racism between white and black, she extends her issue of racial other to global one with new rising issue of immigration in South African society. It seems that Gordimer's such issue is well represented by two main characters: Julie Summers who comes from a wealthy family and falls in love with Abdu, an illegal immigrant who was born from a poor country in Middle East and is now working at a garage in a downtown of Johannesburg with hiding his real name Ibrahim ibn Musa. Having an official relationship with Ibrahim and joining the regular meeting at the El-Ay (L.A.) Cafe where all participants can enjoy the freedom of expression/speech except for Abdu, she begins to have interest in his silence and his presence, orientalized as the Arab Prince for her imagination. Arriving at Abdu 's nation later, she also keeps projecting the 'less civilized' images to his nation where there are only desert, uneducated people, and dirty houses and streets. In doing so, Gordimer leads reader to a never-ending issue of Orientalism in the Western literature. Moreover, the writer attempts to create a female-centered community at the male-centered Islam community by marginalizing the presence of Abdu who finally leaves to America alone. As Julie is successfully acculturated to the unknown Abdu's community, she begins to place herself at the center of the community and plays a role as a mediator/communicator who can change/civilize it with her western knowledge of language and culture. By replacing the male-centered with the female-centered through Julie, Gordimer seems to be creating an idealized community with the notion of matriarchy. However, Gordimer places Abdu as an unstable subject who has to endlessly move back and forth for his undetermined national and cultural identity while Julie achieves the determined identity in both nations.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.77-105
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• 2008

Even though Paule Marshall and Ishmael Reed have differences of gender, generation, and literary techniques, they share common points in dealing with cultural conflicts and racial discrimination in the United States as Afro-American Writers. As black minority writers, Marshall and Reed write out of a perspective of forced immigrant/fragmentary native consciousness. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the protagonist's reaction to racial prejudice, different cultures and their attempts to reconcile and to coexist with other races and their culture in these writers' representative works. Marshall's uniqueness as a contemporary black female artist stems from her ability to write from the three levels, that is, African American and Caribbean black. So, Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones represents an attempt to identify, analyze, and resolve the conflict between cultural loss/displacement and cultural domination/hegemony. Reed's Japanes by Spring offers a blistering attack upon the various cultural and racial factions of the academy and the bankrupt value systems in America. Reed's depiction of Jack London College's existing racial problems-later compounded by the cultural dilemmas that accompany the Japanese occupation of the institution-reveals his interest in highlighting the ways in which any monoculturalist ideology ultimately results in racist and culturally exclusive policies. Marshall's and Reed's novels provide opportunities for reader to explore various manifestations of intercultual and interethnic dynamics. They present the possibility of reconciliation and coexistence between different race and ethnic cultures through asserting a cultural hybridity and multiculturalism.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.3469-3476
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• 2016

Background: The cancer research literature suggests that women, especially premenopausal women, have lower cancer mortality rates than men. However, it is unclear if that is true for populations at all age levels in all countries and what factors affect such sex differences. This paper attempts to fill that gap. Materials and Methods: Sex- and country-specific cancer mortality data were statistically analyzed with particular attention to geographic, social, and economic factors that may affect the sex differences. Results: The sex differences were age and country specific, rather than universal. Premenopausal women actually tend to have a disadvantage compared to men or postmenopausal women. Male cancer mortality appears to be the affecting factor in explaining variations in sex differences. Latitude of residence and literacy rate are the affecting factors in cancer mortality and sex differences. African and Latin American countries tend to have a female disadvantage, while East Asian and Eastern European countries are more likely to have a female advantage. Conclusions: The findings challenge the cancer mortality literature and indicate that the sex differences and their possible causes are more complicated than the current literature suggests. They also highlight the urgency of adapting age- and country- specific health systems and policies to better meet the needs of younger women.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.45-64
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to understand the direction of the community reading campaign in the U.S.A. known as 'One Book, One City' reflected in the books selected for this campaign for the past 20 years in terms of their classification numbers, subject headings, publication dates, and genres. Analyzed are the author and state lists of 'One Book, One City' Reading Promotions Projects available from the website of the LC (Library of Congress) Center for the Books, and bibliographic records of 735 books selected in only one 'One Book' program, accessed from LC OPAC. Major findings include continuing influences of the all-time favorite 'One Book' selections, including To Kill a Mockingbird and the extension of their span of life through The Big Read, preference for the recent publications, importance of P (Literatures and Languages) Class (530 titles, 72.1%) and PS(American Literatures) subclass (307 titles, 57.9%) in the LC Classification Scheme, distribution of books in 43 genres, including domestic fiction, historical fiction, and psychological fiction, etc., the use of 535 unique LC subject headings and much interests in "City and town life" (10 titles) and "World War, 1939-1945" (8 titles), and prominence of subject groups which begin with "African American..." and "Woman..." out of 96 groups of subject headings. It is found that the subjects and focus of the selected books expand from integration, understanding, integrity to human rights, environment, peace, etc. The limitations of this study is that the influence of the selected books and the changes in communities are not properly analyed.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.191-194
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• 2016

Hypercalcemia of malignancy due to metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma is extremely rare; in fact, to the best of our knowledge, only three case reports of hypercalcemia associated with metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma have been published in the literature to date. Herein, we report a rare case involving a 61-year-old African-American female who had hypercalcemia at initial presentation and who was later diagnosed with poorly differentiated gastric adenocarcinoma with extensive liver metastases, without bone involvement. She was found to have elevated parathyroid hormone-related peptide and normal parathyroid hormone levels. Despite aggressive treatment, she died within a few months of diagnosis.