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This volume investigates the ways in which Toni Morrison's A Mercy, Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, and Carolyn See's There Will Never Be Another You engage with the physical, ideological, and socially constructed "real-and-imagined" spaces of colonialism, justice, diaspora, and risk. Building on a range of theoretical approaches to the production of space, this study argues for the significance of literature as a cartographic practice charting the intricacies of the socio-spatiality of human life. Through rigorous readings, this book examines each novel as a critical map that both represents and explores contested spaces and alternative spatial negotiations. These spatially oriented literary analyses contribute to recent conceptualizations of space as socially and relationally produced, open, dynamic, and contested, and enrich the existing scholarship on the novels discussed here. Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter One -- 1.1 Space, Identity, Politics, and Place -- 1.2 The Spatial Turn in the Social Sciences -- 1.2.1 Henri Lefebvre and the Social Production of Space -- 1.2.2 Edward Soja and Thirdspace -- 1.2.3 Doreen Massey and the Relational Space -- 1.3 Reading for Space -- 1.3.1 Space, Narrative, Geography, and Literature -- 1.3.2 Spatially Oriented Literary Studies -- 1.3.3 The (Relational) Space of This Study -- 1.4 Conclusion -- Chapter Two -- 2.1 Colonialism, Space, and Literature -- 2.2 Reading A Mercy for Space -- 2.3 Narrative Spaces in A Mercy -- 2.3.1 The Physical Spaces of Colonialism -- 2.3.2 "Dark Matter out There, Thick, Unknowable, Aching to be made into a World" -- 2.3.3 The Real-and-Imagined Spaces of Colonial Spatiality -- 2.4 Conclusion -- Chapter Three -- 3.1 Space, Spatial Justice, and Literature -- 3.2. Reading In Another Place, Not Here for Space -- 3.3 Narrative Spaces in In Another Place, Not Here -- 3.3.1 The Physical Spaces of Injustice -- 3.3.2 "And They Have Imagined Themselves into the White Town's Imagining" -- 3.3.3 Claiming Space -- 3.4 Conclusion -- Chapter Four -- 4.1 Diaspora, Diaspora Space, and Literature -- 4.2 Reading The Namesake for Space -- 4.3 Narrative Spaces in The Namesake -- 4.3.1 The Physical Spaces of Diaspora -- 4.3.2 The Dominant Representations of Diaspora Spaces -- 4.3.3 Lived Spaces of Diaspora -- 4.4 Conclusion -- Chapter Five -- 5.1 Risk, Space, and Literature -- 5.2 Reading There Will Never Be Another You for Space -- 5.3 Narrative Spaces in There Will Never Be Another You -- 5.3.1 The Physical Spaces of / as Riskscapes -- 5.3.2 The Dominant Representations of Riskscapes -- 5.3.3 Real-and-Imagined Spaces as Alternative Riskscapes -- 5.4 Conclusion -- Conclusion -- Works Cited.
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