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Ishiguro, Kazuo   Reference library

The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature

...and selfhood far outstrip similar quandaries faced by Ryder, her thematic forbearer. As the novel progresses, the reader discovers that Kathy is a genetically engineered clone whose sole purpose is to furnish vital organs for the “normal” people of the world. The clones are monitored by “guardians” who teach them to appreciate the refinements of life, including music and art. Yet despite all this, Ishiguro strives to avoid sentimentality, paradoxically reaffirming that, even among clones, Heraclitus was right: “Character is fate.” As in When We Were...

Human Rights and Asian American Literature and Culture   Reference library

Crystal Parikh

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture

...Rights and Asian American Literature and Culture Just Like People In her poem “The Watchtower,” Mitsuye Yamada pairs a brief description of the “one uniformed guard,” who monitors the Japanese Americans detained in the World War II internment camps, along with that of the teenagers who dance to a live band in a camp rec hall: “This is what we did with our days. / We loved and we lived / just like people.” 1 The presence of the guard belies the conditions under which the speaker and her peers live “like people,” conditions also spelled out in Yamada’s...

US Central Americans in Art and Visual Culture   Reference library

Kency Cornejo

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature

...of Central Americans in the US imaginary was determined more by Hollywood films and journalism than by Central Americans. Following a shameful twenty-year-long involvement in the Vietnam War ( 1955–1975 ), US citizens looked closely at the isthmus as atrocities unfolded. They monitored killings, genocides, torture, and human right abuses propelled by the US government, which trained and contributed millions of dollars to the Central American military in the repression of its peoples. A US sanctuary movement and solidarity groups with the Central American...