This special issue of AmLit - American Literatures presents four essays that explore narratives by ethnic Americans diversifying testimonial studies through the frames of migration, resettlement, and social justice. Through careful attention to form, each contributor examines how contemporary testimonial aesthetics have played a crucial yet overlooked role in amplifying the voices of those who suffer under the conditions of neoliberal globalization. The articles address the diverse life writing works of Vehanoush Tekian, Hrayr Eulmessekian, and Ara Madzounian [Chahinian], Tarfia Faizullah [Reimer], Maya Chinchilla [Deckman], and Carmen Aguirre [Netzer]. The issue draws attention to the ways that scholars of American literatures can re-examine how we position ourselves in relation to the decolonial knowledge that is at the heart of testimonial writing.
Content
Testimonial Encounters in the Americas: Threading Community Together via Testimonial Disclosure
The Space in Between: Overlapping Narratives of Arrival and Departure in Armenian-American Literary and Visual Arts
Tarfia Faizullah’s Poetics of Testimony and Transnational Feminist Praxis
Soft Politics: Latinx Solidarity (Baby) in Maya Chinchilla’s The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética (2014)
Material Weapons: Paratext, Ethics, and Testimony in Carmen Aguirre’s Something Fierce
Playing in the “Dirt”: On Learning to Learn from Testimonial Encounters
