Therí A. Pickens is an Assistant Professor of English at Bates College. Her research focuses on Arab American and African American literatures and cultures, Disability Studies, philosophy, and literary theory. Her critical work has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Al-Jadid, Journal of Canadian Literature, Al-Raida, and, the ground-breaking collection, Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions.

• Introduction. 1. Respirating Resistance: Suheir Hammad’s Invocation of Breath. 2. Try a Little Tenderness: Tactilic Experience in Danzy Senna and Alicia Erian. 3. Unfitting and Not Belonging: Feeling Embodied and Being Displaced in Rabih Alameddine’s Fiction. 4. Beyond 1991: Magic Johnson and the Limits of HIV/AIDS Activism. 5. The Big C Meets the Big O: Pain and Pleasure in Breast Cancer Narratives. Conclusion.

"Rarely does scholarly work generate in me a feeling of excitement, but that's exactly what New Body Politics has done. Here is a book that redefines the limits and possibilities of comparative analysis and brings into brilliant conversation matters of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and representation. Even better, it is written with verve and clarity."—Steven Salaita, Virginia Tech"A bold new foray into the exploration of corporeality and the sociopolitical through U.S. minority literatures: Therí A. Pickens brings together African American and Arab American cultural and literary expressions in a way that will not soon be forgotten. By putting these two complex traditions into conversation with one another, New Body Politics takes the reader through a dazzling array of topics, from the construction of minority subjecthood and family politics to illness and medical practices. This is a rare and important ‘first’ in American Studies, Disability Studies, African American Studies, and Arab American Studies: a long-awaited yet desperately needed comparative analysis of two groups who are distinct, yet overlap with one another quite poignantly."—Michelle M. Wright, Northwestern University

Therí A. Pickens is an Assistant Professor of English at Bates College. Her research focuses on Arab American and African American literatures and cultures, Disability Studies, philosophy, and literary theory. Her critical work has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Al-Jadid, Journal of Canadian Literature, Al-Raida, and, the ground-breaking collection, Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions.

• Introduction. 1. Respirating Resistance: Suheir Hammad’s Invocation of Breath. 2. Try a Little Tenderness: Tactilic Experience in Danzy Senna and Alicia Erian. 3. Unfitting and Not Belonging: Feeling Embodied and Being Displaced in Rabih Alameddine’s Fiction. 4. Beyond 1991: Magic Johnson and the Limits of HIV/AIDS Activism. 5. The Big C Meets the Big O: Pain and Pleasure in Breast Cancer Narratives. Conclusion.

"Rarely does scholarly work generate in me a feeling of excitement, but that's exactly what New Body Politics has done. Here is a book that redefines the limits and possibilities of comparative analysis and brings into brilliant conversation matters of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and representation. Even better, it is written with verve and clarity."—Steven Salaita, Virginia Tech"A bold new foray into the exploration of corporeality and the sociopolitical through U.S. minority literatures: Therí A. Pickens brings together African American and Arab American cultural and literary expressions in a way that will not soon be forgotten. By putting these two complex traditions into conversation with one another, New Body Politics takes the reader through a dazzling array of topics, from the construction of minority subjecthood and family politics to illness and medical practices. This is a rare and important ‘first’ in American Studies, Disability Studies, African American Studies, and Arab American Studies: a long-awaited yet desperately needed comparative analysis of two groups who are distinct, yet overlap with one another quite poignantly."—Michelle M. Wright, Northwestern University

Therí A. Pickens is an Assistant Professor of English at Bates College. Her research focuses on Arab American and African American literatures and cultures, Disability Studies, philosophy, and literary theory. Her critical work has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Al-Jadid, Journal of Canadian Literature, Al-Raida, and, the ground-breaking collection, Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions.

• Introduction. 1. Respirating Resistance: Suheir Hammad’s Invocation of Breath. 2. Try a Little Tenderness: Tactilic Experience in Danzy Senna and Alicia Erian. 3. Unfitting and Not Belonging: Feeling Embodied and Being Displaced in Rabih Alameddine’s Fiction. 4. Beyond 1991: Magic Johnson and the Limits of HIV/AIDS Activism. 5. The Big C Meets the Big O: Pain and Pleasure in Breast Cancer Narratives. Conclusion.

"Rarely does scholarly work generate in me a feeling of excitement, but that's exactly what New Body Politics has done. Here is a book that redefines the limits and possibilities of comparative analysis and brings into brilliant conversation matters of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and representation. Even better, it is written with verve and clarity."—Steven Salaita, Virginia Tech"A bold new foray into the exploration of corporeality and the sociopolitical through U.S. minority literatures: Therí A. Pickens brings together African American and Arab American cultural and literary expressions in a way that will not soon be forgotten. By putting these two complex traditions into conversation with one another, New Body Politics takes the reader through a dazzling array of topics, from the construction of minority subjecthood and family politics to illness and medical practices. This is a rare and important ‘first’ in American Studies, Disability Studies, African American Studies, and Arab American Studies: a long-awaited yet desperately needed comparative analysis of two groups who are distinct, yet overlap with one another quite poignantly."—Michelle M. Wright, Northwestern University