'This unusual picture book, a portrait of an urban homeless community, features a loving mother and son whose only misfortune is to be socially displaced. Mandy and Zac sleep at night in a rocket-shaped sculpture in the city park; the boy's fertile imagination has the pair hurtling through outer space. Their (rather bleak) reality, however, consists of bathing in train station restrooms and procuring food from other homeless people who have been helped by merchants' donations.'
Source: Publishers Weekly (https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-590-45598-5). (Sighted: 15/7/2021)
Bradford is concerned here with the tendency to treat the terms 'sentimentality' and 'sentimental' as universal and unchanging, arguing instead that notions of sentimentality are largely culturally-dependent and furthermore, are often attached to the mythmaking practices associated with national identity (17). According to Richard White, national mythologies and cultural sentimentalism are 'invented within a framework of modern Western ideas about science, nature, race, society and nationality' (17). After a close analyses of the listed texts, Bradford contends that 'ideas about sentimentality are inextricably connected with assumptions of the patriarchal relations which are still dominant within the institutions and practices of contemporary societies' (26).
Bradford is concerned here with the tendency to treat the terms 'sentimentality' and 'sentimental' as universal and unchanging, arguing instead that notions of sentimentality are largely culturally-dependent and furthermore, are often attached to the mythmaking practices associated with national identity (17). According to Richard White, national mythologies and cultural sentimentalism are 'invented within a framework of modern Western ideas about science, nature, race, society and nationality' (17). After a close analyses of the listed texts, Bradford contends that 'ideas about sentimentality are inextricably connected with assumptions of the patriarchal relations which are still dominant within the institutions and practices of contemporary societies' (26).
