Notes on Vermin Hovanec Hardback LUP – University of Michigan Press

Notes on VerminAuthor(s): Caroline Hovanec\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: The University of Michigan Press, United States\nImprint: The University of Michigan Press\nISBN-13: 9780472077205, 978-0472077205\nSynopsis\nVerminrats, cockroaches, pigeons, mosquitoes, and other pestsare, to most people, objects of disgust. And vermin metaphors, likening human beings to these loathed creatures, appear in the ugliest forms of political rhetoric. Indeed, vermin imagery has often been used to denigrate poor, foreign, or racialized people. Yet many writers have reclaimed vermin, giving new meaning to creeping rodents, swarming insects, and wriggling worms. \n\nNotes on Vermin is an atlas of the literary vermin that appear in modern and contemporary literature, from Franz Kafkas gigantic insect to Richard Wrights city rats to Namwali Serpells storytelling mosquitoes. As parasites, trespassers, and collectives, vermin animals prove useful to writers who seek to represent life in the margins of powe.