Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Curated Storytelling
Chapter 2: Charting the Storytelling Turn
Chapter 3: Stories and Statecraft: Why Counting on Apathy Might Not
Be Enough
Chapter 4: Out of the Home, Into the House: How Storytelling at the
Legislature Can Narrow Movement Goals
Chapter 5: Sticking to the Script: The Battle Over
Representations
Chapter 6: Rumbas in the Barrio: Personal Lives in a Collectivist
Project
Epilogue: New Movements, New Stories?
Bibliography
Index
Sujatha Fernandes is Professor of Political Economy and Sociology at the University of Sydney. She was previously a Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York. A former member of the Princeton Society of Fellows, she is the author of Cuba Represent!, Who Can Stop the Drums?, and Close to the Edge. She has written for The New York Times, The Nation, and Dissent, among other publications.
"Readers will find an engaging and insightful exploration that is
highly suggestive of the impact that neoliberalism has on social
movement claims making and the subversive impact that making claims
in these ways can have for social movements, their members, and
their constituents." -- Timothy B. Gongaware, University of
Wisconsin La Crosse, American Journal of Sociology
"In a world in which telling stories has become a mark of activist
practice, Sujatha Fernandes demands we consider the unanticipated
consequences of narrative. In her remarkable, frame-breaking work,
Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling, Fernandes
reminds us that even those tales designed to be challenging can
support a neoliberal status quo, placing personal experience before
collective action. Based on rich and diverse case studies
from New York to Venezuela to Afghanistan, Fernandes demonstrates
that the narrative turn can produce discomforting outcomes unless
the position of the oppressed community is carefully considered.
This is a rare
work that through its powerful logic and dramatic examples has
changed forever how I will listen to stories."-- Gary Alan Fine,
James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University,
and author of The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism,
Immigration, and Trade Matter
"Sujatha Fernandes develops a compelling political economy of
storytelling in this book. Richly constituted by careful attention
to the instrumental importance and uses of stories of marginalized
peoples, Curated Stories is at once immersed in the critical
literature on stories and storytelling, globalization, and social
history; it is in this sense a model of the best of
interdisciplinary scholarship."
--Kandice Chuh, Professor of English and American Studies, Graduate
Center, CUNY
"In a well thought out, brilliantly written book, Sujatha Fernandes
engages readers in conversation about domestic labor, undocumented
migrants, and other important issues. The hard work of devising
strategy and forming coalitions forces us to ask: Whose movement is
it? Who gets to frame and shape the narrative? Fernandes reminds us
that the answers matter greatly to achieving real social
change."
--Christine Lewis, Secretary/Cultural Outreach Coordinator of
Domestic Workers United
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