OSTRAVSKÁ UNIVERZITA
FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA
AMERICAN ETHNIC LITERATURES
STANISLAV KOLÁŘ
OSTRAVA 2003
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CONTENT
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. XX
1. African American Literature ............................................................................................. XX
2. Native American Literature ............................................................................................... XX
3. Asian American Literature ................................................................................................ XX
4. Hispanic American Literature ........................................................................................... XX
Summary ................................................................................................................................ XX
Test .......................................................................................................................................... XX
Key .......................................................................................................................................... XX
Literature ................................................................................................................................. XX
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INTRODUCTION
Every year I give my students a questionnaire asking them to name the three most
significant American writers who are, in their view, essential to read. The most
common names which constantly recur in their responses are Ernest Hemingway,
John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac, Francis Scott
Fitzgerald, William Styron, and less frequently William Faulkner, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Jack London, Walt Whitman and Tennessee
Williams.
What is striking, among other things, is the absence of ethnic minority writers and
the absolute dominance of WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) authors. From
time to time J. D. Salinger, Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer are mentioned but it
is emblematic that these are authors who have entered the American literary
mainstream and for whom ethnicity (their Jewishness) is more or less a marginal
matter.
However, my students’ responses are not surprising and in a way they mirror the
development of the canon (the marrow of tradition) of American literature in the
United States. For a long time ethnic writers were ignored and consequently for
the majority they were “invisible”. They were excluded from school curricula.
There was no place for them in anthologies, textbooks or in classes.
The turbulent sixties, marked by the feminist and civil rights movements, have
radically changed this situation. The notion of America as a multicultural society
deeply shaped the new approach to American literature. More attention began to
be paid to ethnicity, which resulted in the inclusion of many interesting minority
writers into the canon (and curricula). This tendency was crowned by the
publication of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (1990) containing
numerous ethnic authors. I was lucky to meet its general editor, Paul Lauter, in
Salzburg, Austria, who profoundly influenced my teaching of American writing.
Unfortunately the teaching of American literature in this country, especially at
secondary schools, is still confined to the mainstream writers. The purpose of this
study text is to arouse your interest in ethnic literatures in the USA that have
become an integral part of American literature. In other words, you should attain
an awareness and a respect for all cultures in the United States. The text
complements my study material Contemporary American Literature, in which
ethnic writers have been deliberately omitted. This text briefly introduces you to
African American, Native American, Asian American and Hispanic American
literatures. If you are interested in Jewish American literature, you are encouraged
to study my monograph (in Czech) Evropské kořeny americké židovské literatury
(1998, The European Roots of Jewish American Literature).
After studying this text you will be acquainted with:

the main distinctive features of ethnic literatures in the USA ;

the main representatives of Americ an ethnic literatures ;

their representative works .
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You will be able:

to understand different cultures (literatures) better ;

to understand the characteristics of American ethnic literatures .
You will acquire :

an overview of the development of African Amer ican, Native
American, Asian American, and Hispanic American literatures ;

some historical background knowledge of individual ethnic
cultures .
Time for Study:
1 + 15-16 hours (Theory + Exercises )
Key Words:
African American, Native American, Asian Ame rican, Hispanic
American, protest, slave narratives, folklore, Harlem Renaissance,
New Negro movement, assimilation, tradition, identity, racism,
sexism, black nationalism, separatism, autobiography, oral
tradition, storytelling, ceremony, ritual, nature, communal values,
Native American Renaissance, generational conflicts, internment,
Nissei, Isei, Chicano / Chicana, corrido, barrios, gender, class,
ethnic, ethnicity.
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1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
“Would America have been America without her Negro people?” asked an
important black intellectual leader, one of the founders of the NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People), William E. B. Du Bois. The
most distinguished poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, answers
this question in his poetry when he says “I, too, am America”. Black people and
their culture have become an integral part of contemporary America.
What are the most distinct features of African American literature? The following
list is by no means complete, yet it tries to give you some main characteristics:
- reflection of the hard life of black people in America; hardships of African
American life
- interest in the African American past (African roots, outstanding figures of
black history, heritage derived from the rural American South)
- protest, connected with the struggle for civil rights; protest against
injustice and discrimination
- connection with black folklore as a source of inspiration (oral tradition,
folk songs, tales etc.)
- influence of music (adaptation of song forms, jazz, gospel, blues,
spirituals; music as a subject of literary works)
- employment of biblical and mythological motifs
- black language (dialect)
Distinctive
features of
African
American
literature
There is not enough space to outline the whole history of African American
Beginnings of
literature. Yet some literary figures can be mentioned here. The first African
African American
American writers emerged before the Civil War in the 18th century. They were
literature
slaves who learnt to read and write. Jupiter Hammon (1720? – 1800?) and the first
significant African American poet, Phillis Wheatley (1753? – 1784), were among
the most important. However, even from Wheatley’s collection Poems on Various
Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) the reader does not learn much about the
problems of black life in America or about the author’s slavery.
In the 19th century an increasing number of black authors wrote against slavery
19th century
and racial oppression. Anti-slavery poems were written by George Moses Horton
(1797 – 1883) and Frances E. W. Harper (1825 – 1883), but the most remarkable
abolitionist voice was articulated by Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895) in his
autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,
Written by Himself (1845). This book is unique among the large number of slave
narratives because of Douglass’s understated, restrained style and his power of
expression. In its deep psychological and sociological analysis of slavery, this
narrative remained unsurpassed. Black folklore is employed in the Lyrics of Lowly
Life (1896) by Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872 – 1906), in the fiction of Charles
Waddell Chesnutt (1858 – 1932), and also by the forerunner of the Harlem
Renaissance James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938), the author of The
Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912).
The effort of African Americans to seek full exercise of civil rights was
manifested in the work of two rivals, Booker T. Washington (1856 – 1915), the
author of the autobiography Up from Slavery (1901) which described his career
Booker T.
Washington, Du
Bois
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and remarkable achievements, and W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 – 1963). The historian
and scholar Du Bois rejected Washington’s conciliatory attitude toward racial
advancement, based on belief that blacks should gain the respect of white people
through pursuing moral, educational, and occupational self-improvement,
sacrifice, acceptance of the values of the dominant culture, and self-restraint. Du
Bois dealt with the position of blacks in America and their political, economic and
social rights in his book of essays entitled The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Exercise
Read the first chapter of Du Bois’s book The Souls of Black Folk, “Of Our
Spiritual Strivings”, and answer several questions:
1) How is Du Bois’ double vision, his Emersonian double-consciousness,
expressed in the title of the book and throughout the chapter?
2) What are the possible meanings of the “veil”, one of Du Bois’s most
famous symbols?
3) What are the racial and social dimensions of this essay?
4) Is Du Bois an assimilationist?
5) What are black people spiritually striving for?
Sources
Lauter, Paul et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 2.
Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1994. 1012 – 1017.
http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html
Harlem
Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the movement that made African American culture
visible for the first time. It encouraged black people in the USA socially,
politically, and culturally. It gave them a feeling of pride in their African heritage
and African American culture. The Harlem Renaissance is usually dated from the
publication of Claude McKay’s (1890 - 1948) poem “Harlem Shadows” (1922)
and Jean Toomer’s (1894 - 1967) inventive work Cane (1923), which combines
various genres. This period of activity carried on until the stock market crash of
1929 and the Great Depression. The movement was the product of the Great
Migration, when blacks migrated from the South to the North and became an
urbanized population (Harlem became the largest black urban community in the
States).
New Negro
The Harlem Renaissance is associated with a program called the New Negro
movement. Named after Alain Locke’s (1885 - 1954) powerful essay and
anthology “The New Negro” (1925), it rejected assimilation with white culture
and emphasized the importance of African American heritage and traditions. The
“New Negro” is no longer willing to accept secondary status in society. He is
conceived as an active fighter for freedom, in other words a rebel. He feels an
optimism and believes in his strength and abilities. This self-confidence was
strengthened by blacks’ participation in World War I. Locke challenges
stereotyped images of black literary characters and speaks of the importance of
urbanization for African Americans. He hopes that Harlem will be the capital of a
new black consciousness.
Illustrative example
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With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro
community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase… The days of “aunties”,
”uncles” and “mammies” is equally gone. Uncle Tom and Sambo have passed
on, and even the “Colonel” and “George” play barnstorm roles from which they
escape with relief when the public spotlight is off. The popular melodrama has
about played itself out, and it is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and
settle down to a realistic facing of facts.
(Alain Locke, “The New Negro”)
The main representatives of the Harlem Renaissance were the Jamaica-born poet
Claude McKay, who used fairly traditional forms to express his radical racial
protest, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen (1903 – 1946), Arna Bontemps (1902 –
1973), Sterling A. Brown (1901 – 1989), Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960)
whose fiction celebrates black culture and records the lives of common folks in
the rural South (Mules and Men, 1935, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937),
and – especially - Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) was a very versatile author. He wrote poetry,
fiction, drama, essays, and autobiographies The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I
Wander (1956). During the 1920s he participated in many of the editorial
activities and fervent debates of the Harlem Renaissance. He is known as a “poet
of Harlem”, which is where he took an inspiration for many of his poems. The
hectic atmosphere of nighttime Harlem, a venue for escape from everyday
troubles, is reflected in his first collection of poems The Weary Blues (1926). It
contains Hughes’s famous poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which records
the collective memory of his nation. Originally it appeared in the magazine Crisis
in 1921 with a dedication to W. E. B. Du Bois. Proud of his folk heritage, he
adapted spirituals, blues, and jazz to his own poetic expression, for example in
Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Fields of Wonder
(1947), Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) or Ask Your Mama (1962),
dedicated to Louis Armstrong, “the greatest horn blower of them all”.
Hughes
Exercise
Read the poems “The Weary Blues,” “I, Too,” “Dream Variations,”
“Harlem,” and “Negro,” and consider in what respects his poems are typical of the
Harlem Renaissance and correspond with the ideas of the New Negro movement.
Notice how Hughes makes use of African American folk-song forms and which
lines convey an aesthetic celebration of black color (race).
African American literature of racial and social protest in the thirties is
represented by Richard Wright (1908 – 1960). His Uncle Tom’s Children (1938)
is a collection of short stories set in the rural South where Wright grew up. His
protagonists are portrayed as rebels; they have ceased to be passive Uncle Toms.
Wright’s naturalism reached its climax in the proletarian protest novel Native Son
(1940), the story of Bigger Thomas, a murderer of two women who is depicted as
a victim of his social environment. Black Boy (1945) is Wright’s autobiography of
the first twenty years of his life.
After World War II African American works became standard texts of American
literature. The ideas and issues that have been at the center of black writing have
Wright
Black writing after
World War II
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increasingly become the subjects of mainstream American writing. The themes of
black writing are at the core of American social thought. Many African American
writers have produced a literature of social protest, reflecting the constant tension
between assimilation and separatism.
Ellison
One of the most important literary events in black writing was the publication of
Ralph Ellison’s (1914 – 1994) novel Invisible Man (1952). In its complexity it
represents the climax of imaginative writing in the second half of the 20th century,
and not only within African American fiction. In 1965 about two hundred writers,
editors, and critics voted it the greatest novel of the previous twenty years. This
work, with its nameless picaresque protagonist, deals with the problems of
identity felt by black people. It covers various stages of the cultural and political
history of black people in the USA. Ellison uses various symbols conveying the
social invisibility of black Americans and the insensitive blindness of whites to
their individuality.
The issue of black identity is also examined in the essayistic work of James
Baldwin (1924 – 1987) – Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name
(1961) and The Fire Next Time (1963). His fiction has a deeply personal character
reflecting religious experience (Baldwin at fourteen underwent a religious
conversion) and problems of social marginality, complicated by the author’s
homosexual orientation. These are the topics of his novels Go Tell It on the
Mountain (1953), Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Another Country (1962). He is
especially convincing in his naturalistic depiction of life in the Harlem ghetto.
Morrison
African American writing has been enriched by many women writers. Toni
Morrison (1931 - ) and Alice Walker (1944 - ) are possibly the most
significant of them. Toni Morrison was even awarded the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1993. In her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), a story of a plain
black girl abused by her father, Morrison deals with similar topics to Ellison or
Baldwin. Pecola Breedlove’s search for identity enables the author to be critical of
her own race and to challenge the dominant white aesthetic ideal, represented by
then popular child actress Shirley Temple. Another masterpiece by Morrison is
Beloved (1987), a novel set in the mid-1800s that focuses on the life of a runaway
slave, Sethe, who kills her young daughter to save her from the cruelties of
slavery. It employs techniques of magical realism. Morrison’s writing also
includes other remarkable novels, including Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977),
Tar Baby (1981), Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1998).
Walker and other
women writers
Alice Walker’s third novel The Color Purple (1982) has similarities with
Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: it is also a story of a girl abused by men, first by her
stepfather and later on by her husband. The novel has an epistolary character as it
is written in the form of letters, a means for the heroine’s (Celie) self-expression.
Racism and sexism are Walker’s dominant themes. She represents black feminism
in American literature. Other women writers have also contributed considerably to
the development of African American literature, for example Maya Angelou
(1928 - ), Toni Cade Bambara (1939 - 1995), Jamaica Kincaid (1949 - ),
Gloria Naylor (1950 - ), and Paule Marshall (1929 - ).
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Exercise
Read Paule Marshall’s short story “To Da-duh: In Memoriam” and follow the
encounter of two different cultures in her text. How is an opposite culture
perceived? What is Da-duh’s attitude to Western civilization? How would you
describe the relationship between Da-duh and her granddaughter? Comment on
the multicultural background of this story.
Read the essay “America: The Multinational Society” of another major
contemporary African American writer, Ishmael Reed (1938 - ). What is Reed’s
view of America? What word is seen as the antonym of his term “multinational”?
Which person is this antonym ascribed to?
Note: Reed in his fiction (Mumbo Jumbo, 1972), poetry and drama calls for the
recognition of the contribution of minorities to Western civilization. He
incessantly subverts white and Eurocentric views of history and culture.
Sources
The Heath Anthology. 2182 – 2190.
Hall, Donald, and D. L. Emblen, ed. A Writer’s Reader. New York: Longman,
1997. 446 – 450.
In accordance with the radical atmosphere of the sixties, some African American
writers assumed an increasingly militant stance toward American society. They Black nationalism
stood in positions of black nationalism or separatism. The militancy of the black and separatism
consciousness is expressed in the work of LeRoi Jones (1934 ), who even
changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka, and also in the book of essays Soul on
Ice (1968) of the influential representative of the Black Panthers Eldridge Cleaver
(1935 - 1998), and in the work of Malcolm X (1925 – 1965). The latter predicted
his own assassination in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964), as recorded by
Alex Haley (1921 - ). Haley himself is the author of the monumental saga of his
family past Roots (1976).
Paradoxically Malcolm X’s opponent, Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968), man Tradition of
who preached a non-violent way of solving social problems, also became a victim non-fiction
of violence. His speeches and essays (“I Have a Dream” is the best-known) are of
high literary value. As you can see, African American literature is very rich in
non-fiction. The tradition of autobiographies has its origins in numerous slavenarratives of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Contemporary black writers whose work has gained attention include Charles
Johnson (1948 - ), whose The Middle Passage (1990) takes us back to the 19th
century slave trade, John Edgar Wideman (1941 - ), and David Bradley
(1950 - ).
Modern African American poetry is unimaginable without Robert Hayden (1913 – Poetry and
1980), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - ), LeRoi Jones, Nikki Giovanni (1943 - ), drama
the author of Black Judgement (1968) and Black Feeling Black Talk Black
Judgement (1970), Sonia Sanchez (1934 - ), an active participant in the civil
rights movement in the 1960s, and Yusef Komunyakaa (1947 - ), who finds
poetry among ordinary urban people and in his childhood spent in Louisianna
(Magic City, 1992). Likewise, no one can do justice to African American theatre
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without considering the plays of Lorraine Hansberry (1935 – 1965) and her drama
A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Ntozage Shange (1948 - ) and the choreopoem For
Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf (1975),
LeRoi Jones (The Slave, Dutchman, 1964), Ed Bullins (1936 - ) and his play
Electronic Nigger (1968), and August Wilson (1945 - ). Wilson can be
considered the most prominent contemporary black playwright in the States. In his
plays, including Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1979), Fences (1986), Joe Turner’s
Come and Gone (1988) and The Piano Lesson (1990), he portrays the lives of
black Americans throughout the 20th century.
Exercise
Read several poems from Nikki Giovanni’s collection Black Feeling Black Talk
Black Judgement (e.g. “Detroit Conference of Unity and Art”, “The Funeral of
Martin Luther King, Jr.”, “Knoxville, Tennessee”, “Records”) and interpret their
political character.
Sources
Giovanni, Nikki. Black Feeling Black Talk Black Judgement. New York. 1970.
2. NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE
The oral tradition
Although Native American literature was the first literature to be created on the
American continent, it was almost the last to be recognized. Having been forced
to remain silent about their heritage, it took a long time for Native Americans to
be able to reflect their own true identities. Because their literature had an oral
character, much of it has been lost. Yet various traditional tribal myths, songs,
ritual chants and so forth have been preserved. They provide glimpses into the
lives of Native American peoples in the past.
Brief history of
Native American
writing
Native American literature in its written form goes back to the early 19th century
when the first Indian writers published books about their tribal cultures. More
often Native Americans like Geronimo and Chief Joseph told their stories to white
writers or anthropologists, and they were published as memoirs. One of the most
famous of these memoirs was, however, published in the 20th century. Black Elk
Speaks (1932) was told through the Nebraska poet John G. Neihardt. According to
Neihardt, Black Elk told his story to his son in the Oglala Lakota language. The
son then translated it into English for Neihardt, who rewrote it. It is an important
account of the lives of whites and Indians in the nineteenth century, in spite of the
problems of authenticity which affect it (because it is difficult to distinguish
between what comes from Black Elk and what comes from Neihardt).
Not every personal account was told to someone else, however. Some individual
authors appeared, among them Standing Bear (1829 – 1908) from the Ponca tribe,
Charles A. Eastman (1858 – 1939), a Santee Sioux and the author of The Soul of
the Indian: An Interpretation (1911), John Milton Oskison (1874 – 1947) of
Cherokee descent, and Mourning Dove (1888 – 1936), who developed an intense
interest in the oral tradition of her nation, the Okanogas. In her Coyote Stories
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(1930) she employs folk material relating to animal people and tricksters. The first
noteworthy Indian writer of fiction was D’Arcy McNickle (1904 – 1977), who
wrote the novel The Surrounded (1936), set in northwest Montana. It emphasizes
traditional, indigenous values that appear in confrontation with the assimilationist
forces represented by Christian missions.
Exercise
Read J. M. Oskison’s short story “The Problem of Old Harjo” and pay attention to
the imposition of one group’s ideology upon another. How does American society
make Indians conform to the expectations of Anglo-dominated society? What are
the reasons for Miss Evans’ and Harjo’s traumas? What is the role of religious
ideology in destroying cultures? Characterize Oskison’s tone.
Sources
The Heath Anthology. 509 – 515.
Before focusing on the first flowering of Native American literature in the late
sixties and seventies, let us have a look at some of its distinctive features.
-
-
emphasis on the oral tradition
sacredness of the spoken word; tradition of storytelling:
Storytellers have the role of historians. As Leslie M. Silko in her novel
Ceremony says, “You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories”.
Many stories relate to “animal” people. They tell of men turned into
animals (e.g. tales about the Coyote, Turtle, Fox, Mountain Lion, Otter
etc.)
significance of ceremony, which has medicinal power
ritual structure of writings
circular notion of time in opposition to our conception of linear time (the
circle becomes a symbol of time)
importance of nature
interconnectedness between the sacredness of nature and the spirituality of
life
preference for communal values, sense of collectivity
search for the self (initiation stories of American youth)
Distinctive features
of Native American
literature
In 1968 the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday (1934 - ) published his book
The Native
House Made of Dawn, which marks the beginning of the Native American
American
Renaissance. The following year he became the first Indian Pulitzer Prize writer,
Renaissance
and in the same year the Sioux attorney Vine Deloria, Jr. (1933 - ) published his
book Custer Died For Your Sins, subtitled “An Indian Manifesto”, and an
anthology of the writing of young Native Americans, The American Indian
Speaks, appeared. In the seventies more important Native American writers
emerged, including Leslie Marmon Silko (1948 - ), Louise Erdrich (1954 - ),
James Welch (1940 - ), Simon J. Ortiz (1941 - ), Gerald Vizenor (1934 - ),
Paula Gunn Allen (1939 - ) and Wendy Rose (1948 - ). These developments
aroused interest in contemporary Native American writing. In fact, the boom in
this literature is now continuing with the emergence of a new generation of
writers, represented especially by Sherman Alexie (1966 - ).
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These writers merge old tribal elements adopted from the oral tradition with
modern literary techniques (for example stream of consciousness). They present a
mythic vision that has been lost. They try to transcend the borderline between
myth, history, and personal experience. Their memory of the past functions as a
link to culture and heritage. However their view of Indian history is often
fragmented as a result of the intrusion of the white civilization, and their novels
are frequently episodic.
First generation
of novels
The first generation of novels produced in the period of the Native American
Renaissance tends to have a circular pattern of time, emphasizing the repetitive
aspects of history. This feature has an impact on the circular composition of the
novels, which are frequently open-ended. The circular conception of time in these
works may stem from the authors’ awareness of the repetition of seasonal cycles.
In some novels, modern Native American writers employ the archetypal, mythic
pattern of the quest. Their protagonists are usually disoriented outsiders who have
problems with society. They suffer from a loss of identity caused by their
encounter with a different (i.e. white) culture. Cultural conflict is a dominant
theme of these books.
Second
generation of
novels
The second generation of novels is often about successful, middle-class
protagonists who have made it in American society but only at the expense of the
loss of their tribal identity. For example Momaday’s novel The Ancient Child
(1989) is about a successful Kiowa painter living in San Francisco who knows
only little about his Indian heritage. Likewise, Welch’s novel The Indian Lawyer
(1990) features a Blackfeet corporate lawyer who even runs for Congress. He
succeeds in white America, yet he feels guilt in relation to his own people. A
middle-class protagonist also appears in the novel The Crown of Columbus (1991)
by Louise Erdrich and her former husband Michael Dorris (1945 – 1997).
Most distinguished writers:
Momaday
House Made of
Dawn
N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) is a novelist, poet, autobiographer, essayist and also
a renowned painter (this has an impact on his poetic style). The Names: A
Memoir (1976) is based on memories of his childhood and youth spent near Rainy
Mountain, Oklahoma, and of moving to New Mexico. The Way to Rainy
Mountain (1969) retells Kiowa folktales.
His masterpiece, House Made of Dawn, centers around Abel, a World War II
veteran, who after his return to a Pueblo reservation in New Mexico finds himself
in a deep personal crisis. We follow his quest to find his place in the tribal
community from which he has become alienated. He oscillates between two
cultures and has the feeling that he does not belong to either of them. His identity
crisis is strengthened by the fact that he is an illegitimate child. At the climax of
the first section of the novel (which consists of four parts), Abel murders an
Albino Indian during the feast of Santiago. He is sent to a prison in Los Angeles
for almost eight years. Momaday presents a ceremonial story; the purpose of the
ritual is to restore Abel’s balance and to return to tribal traditions. The novel has a
circular composition, as it starts and ends with ritual running. Momaday alters the
narrative voices in the manner of Faulkner, and combines Kiowa and Navajo
myths and folklore. He also mingles various genres - the diary of the Christian
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missionary Nicolás, legends and poems. In this way the novel is postmodern, but
in some passages it can also remind us of magical realism. The naturalistic
language of the plot alternates with lyrical passages describing nature, where
Momaday shows his feeling for landscape. The novel’s title refers to an old
Navajo prayer song (at the end Abel discovers that his father was Navajo). House
Made of Dawn is considered to be the first non-linear, non-chronological, ritual
novel of the Native American Renaissance.
Illustrative example
My grandmother was a storyteller; she knew her way around words. She never
learned to read and write, but somehow she knew the good of reading and
writing; she had learned how to listen and delight. She had learned that in words
and in language, and there only, she could have whole and consummate being.
She told me stories, and she taught me to listen.
…You see, for her words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They
came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could
neither be bought nor sold. And she never threw words away.
(N. S. Momaday, House Made of Dawn)
Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna) is a poet, novelist and short story writer. Her
Silko
poetry (Laguna Woman, 1974) and fiction grows out of the region where she grew
up, the Laguna Pueblo reservation near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In her work
she gives literary portrayals of alienated Native Americans who are torn between
two cultures and are trying to find their identity.
The identity crisis is the dominant theme in her famous novel Ceremony (1977).
This novel has won a large general audience. It has certain analogies with
Momaday’s House Made of Dawn. Set in the beautiful landscape of New Mexico,
it also tells the story of a war veteran (Tayo), who returns to the reservation after
fighting against the Japanese in World War II. Like Abel, he is completely
estranged from his people. He is also an outsider, haunted by loss and feelings of
guilt. His health is restored by the Navajo healer Betonie, who prescribes him
therapy in the form of a ceremony. The purpose of the curing ceremony is
integration: Tayo’s reconnection with his traditional Indian culture and its system
of values. The novel is structured along the lines of Native American healing
rituals, and Silko weaves Laguna Pueblo stories and history into her plot. She
shows her respect for storytelling as an integral part of life. The novel has a
multilayered narrative structure in which naturalistic prose is combined with
highly poetic Indian poems. Silko’s other works include the short story collection
The Storyteller (1981) and the novel Almanac of the Dead (1991).
Ceremony
Louise Erdrich (Chippewa), in her first novel Love Medicine (1984), presented a Erdrich
multi-generational story of Chippewa families in North Dakota. The reader is
acquainted with a world where Indians face poverty and alcoholism, and yet still
retain their tribal wisdom. In The Beet Queen (1986) she explores the European
side of her heritage. Tracks (1988) is another novel from her series of books set on
the Northern plains.
James Welch (Blackfeet, Gros Ventre), in his best-known novel Winter in Blood
(1974), delineates the history of his nameless narrator’s family and of his tribe,
OtherNative
American
writers
14
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the Blackfeet. Gerald Vizenor (Chippewa - Anishinabe) fuses postmodern fiction
with the oral tradition of Native Americans. He often employs absurd and bitter
humor in his prose. Vizenor also publishes poetry, reviews and children’s stories.
Wendy Rose (Hopi), Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna), Jim Barnes (Choctaw) and
Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma) are all distinctive Native American poets. Ortiz writes
narrative poems influenced by Whitman. His poetry has political dimensions,
which are evident for example in his cycle of poems From Sand Creek (1981).
Exercise
Read the short story “Snares” by Louise Erdrich. Explain the symbolic meaning
of the title. How is the disintegration of the Indian community reflected in the
story? Describe the characters, especially Grandfather Nanapush.
Read Wendy Rose’s poems “Walking on the Prayerstick” and “To Some Few
Hopi Ancestors”. Notice the symbolic function of songs in her poetry. Interpret
the meaning of both poems. Analyze also the poems “Story Keeper”, Vanishing
Point: Urban Indian” and “Academic Squaw”.
Sources
McQuade, Donald, ed. The Harper American Literature. Volume 2. New York:
Harper Collins College Publishers, 1993. 2481 – 2485.
3. ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Diversity of
Asian American
literature
Themes in Asian
American
literature
The term “Asian American” is rather problematic because of the geographical,
cultural and religious diversity of the world’s largest continent. However the
boundaries of Asian American literature were originally much more limited,
focused purely on writers of East Asian origins. This fact reflects the composition
of the Asian American population: the largest Asian minority in the United States
are the Chinese Americans, followed by the Filipinos and the Japanese. In fact the
early anthologies of Asian American writing, for instance Asian-American
Authors (1972) and Aiiieeeee! (1975), concentrated only on these major
literatures. Later the boundary of Asian American literature was stretched to
include the work of Americans of Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Pakistani, Pacific
and other descent. Accordingly, Asian American literature includes a multitude of
nationalities and is by no means monolithic.
The diversity of Asian American literature is manifested in various forms. It
includes writings ranging from Chinese immigrants’ poems carved on the barrack
walls of Angel Island (the immigration detention site in San Francisco Bay),
through autobiographies, a favored genre in Asian American literature, to modern
short stories, novels, poems and drama. In their works, writers recount the
American experience of Asian immigrants, their cultural conflicts, and
assimilation as an inevitable consequence of claiming America. Their works help
to break down old stereotypes surrounding Asian Americans. Unlike popular
culture (e.g. some Hollywood films), this literature does not present them as
“inscrutable” people indulging in violence. The best works develop the tension
between the longing for assimilation and the need to retain ethnic identity.
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Another strong thematic concern in Asian American literature is the generation
gap. Many works reveal conflict between generations and the complicated
relationship between parents and their Americanized children. Yet they also
underline the central significance of the parent-child relationship in Asian
American communities. Some writers confront the male and female roles in
America and their native land, pointing out the struggle by Asian American
women against traditional patriarchal attitudes. They also depict the changing
social role of Asian men, who often face a personal crisis in America. In their
presentation of enduring questions of ethnic identity and through reminiscences,
Asian American writers take us back to Asian countries with their specific
cultures.
15
Other topics
It is also natural that Asian American writers did not remain silent on the painful
Response to
subject of the historical discrimination of the Asian population. In their writing
discrimination
they have responded to unjust immigration restrictions, for instance the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882, or to the traumatic relocation experience of Japanese
Americans during World War II, when 110,000 residents of Japanese extraction
were sent to internment camps. They point at the chasm between their initial
search for the “Gold Mountain” and the hostile reality. In other words they present
another variation of the power and frustrations of the American Dream from an
Asian American perspective.
Chinese American
Chinese American literature has received wide public acclaim especially due to
Maxine Hong Kingston (1940 - ), who has opened the way for a whole
writers
generation of Asian American writers. Her novel The Woman Warrior: Memoirs
of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) tells the stories of Chinese American women,
particularly the fate of her mother. Because she explores the role of women in
society, she is sometimes regarded as a representative of ethnic feminism. This
postmodern novel combines realism with fantasy, fiction with non-fiction, and
crosses various generic boundaries. In the loose sequel to the novel, China Men
(1980), she focuses on male family members. Her postmodern combination of
Chinese myth and American reality as shown by a Berkeley Beatnik artist is also
present in her novel Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989). Generational
conflicts, especially a lack of understanding between mothers and daughters, are
frequent subjects of Amy Tan’s (1952 - ) fiction. The complexities of motherdaughter relationships are at the core of her most successful novels, The Joy Luck
Club (1989) and The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991). The first of these novels presents
the stories of four mothers and four daughters in a series of narratives told from
the viewpoint of the individual women. Chinese American writing has also been
enriched by Frank Chin (1940 - ), the author of the play The Year of the Dragon
(1981), Gus Lee (1946 - ), known for his China Boy (1991), and Gish Jen (1955
- ), also known as Lillian Jen. Her novels Typical American (1991) and Mona in
the Promised Land (1996) tell the funny and at the same time tragic story of the
immigrant Chang family.
Exercise
Read the story “Two Kinds” from Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club and
describe how generational conflict is conceived here. The story is composed as a
series of disappointments. Try to characterize them. What is the climax of the
daughter’s revolt? Interpret the end of the story. Why is it called “Two Kinds”?
16
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Sources
http://www.angelfire.com/ma/MyGuardianangels/index9.html
Japanese
American
writers
Filipino and
Korean
American
writers
The Japanese American writer John Okada (1923 – 1971) was unknown during
his life. Yet his novel No-No Boy (1957) is a remarkable work, depicting the
effects of World War II on Japanese Americans. It also recounts the internment
experience of the Japanese living in the States after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The author follows the generational conflicts between Issei, first-generation
Japanese immigrants to America, and their American-born children, known as
Nisei. Hisaye Yamamoto (1921 - ) has aroused interest with her short stories,
which are collected in the volume Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (1988).
Her most common subjects are problems of marriage, the frustration of women
facing racial and sexist prejudices and their struggle for self-expression, and again
the generation gap between the Issei and Nisei. Having had first-hand experience
of internment camps, she has also reacted to this traumatic event in her work.
The most popular genre in Asian American literature, autobiography reaches its
climax in the work of the Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan (1903 – 1956).
His America Is in the Heart (1943) describes Bulosan’s early life in the
Philippines, his voyage to America and the hardships he endured as an immigrant
worker in the rural West during the Great Depression. The Korean American
writer Younghill Kang (1903 – 1972) is the author of the autobiographical novels
The Grass Roof (1931) and East Goes West (1937), which recounts the
experiences of a Korean protagonist after coming to America. He exposes the
limited choices of an Asian immigrant in claiming America.
Exercise
Read chapter six of John Okada’s novel No-No Boy and describe the relationship
within Kenji’s family. How is Japanese Americans’ distorted identity reflected in
their inner conflict? How is the internment experience depicted here? Compare the
dilemmas of Ichiro and Kenji and the consequences of their decision.
In the extract from Younghill Kang’s book East Goes West (Part One, Book
Three) try to find the comic view of the problems connected with the
protagonists’ assimilation. Which of the characters is most Americanized? How
are gender issues viewed in relation to the United States and Korea?
Sources:
The Heath Anthology. 2192 – 2202 (Okada).
1950 – 1956 (Kang).
South Asian
American
literauture
American literature from South Asia is best represented by the Indian American
writer Bharati Mukherjee (1940 ). In her works she deals mainly with the
clashes between cultures taking place in her native India or America. She features
Indian female protagonists immigrating to America or returning as visitors to
India. Her best works include the novels Wife (1975), about the isolation of Indian
expatriates, and Jasmine (1989), an odyssey of an Indian widowed woman after
1. Název kapitoly
17
her escape to the States. She has mastered the genre of short stories, for example
in her collection Darkness (1985) and The Middleman and Other Stories (1989).
Exercise
Read Mukherjee’s short story “A Wife Story” and characterize the protagonist
Panna. What is the narrator’s view of America? Follow the juxtaposition of
America and India in the story. Explain the role reversal between Panna and her
husband.
Sources:
The Heath Anthology. 3105 – 3114.
4. HISPANIC AMERICAN LITERATURE
Hispanic American literature (like Asian American literature) is not easy to
Defining Hispanic
define, because it incorporates a variety of literatures with various cultural
American
backgrounds. Consequently the terminology is not unified and you may well come literature
across other terms, for example Latino literature and Chicano literature. This
nomenclature reflects the fact that of all Hispanic Americans living in the United
States, over 60 percent are Chicanos, i.e. people of Mexican ancestry living in the
USA (either Mexican-born immigrants, or US-born citizens of Mexican descent).
Some scholars distinguish between Mexican Americans and Chicanos. The former
indicates a stronger identification with Mexico and can be used as more neutral
expression, while the latter suggests residents more culturally allied with the
United States. Yet many people use these terms interchangeably. The etymology
of the term Chicano is still disputed, however the most likely theory is that it was
derived from Mexicano. It is more important to realize that the term Chicano
literature is subordinate to that of Hispanic American literature, because Hispanic
American literature also includes the writing of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans,
and immigrants from Central and South America. We should make a clear
distinction between Hispanic American literature and Latin American literature,
which exists solely in Spanish and in translation in the USA, written by writers
who do not live there.
Language of
Many scholars stress that the central point of unity among Hispanic American
writers is language. Yet I dare to doubt even this criterion, because it excludes, for Hispanic American
example, immigrant writers from Brazil where the official language is Portuguese. writings
What these writers to a large extent share is their bilingual experience. In their
work they employ two languages, frequently using a mixture of English and
Spanish. The Spanish of their characters is not perceived as a “foreign” language,
but as a vital part of their everyday speech. Even if they write their books only in
English, they still often use Hispanic American expressions. As a matter of fact,
the linguistic layering of their works is much richer. Apart from standard English,
standard Spanish, and standard Mexican Spanish, they also use various dialects
ranging from Tex-Mex idioms and North Mexican Spanish dialect to caló or
pocho or pachuco, a kind of a hybrid language mixing English and Spanish
grammars, structures, and vocabularies.
18
Early Hispanic
American
literature
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All these features epitomize the historical links between Spanish and English
speaking people in the region which we now call the Southwest and show a
concept of immigration that totally differs from the European model. As the wellknown Chicano dramatist Luis Valdez, founder of the theater troupe El Teatro
Campesino and the author of the play Zoot Suit, has said: “We did not in fact
come to the United States at all. The United States came to us”. The turning point
in the history of the Southwest was 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
brought an end to the Mexican-American war and Mexico ceded vast areas of its
territory to the United States. Before this crucial historical moment, literature in
the Southwest was primarily written in Spanish. It included the travel narratives of
the first Spanish explorers and colonizers like Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca,
diaries, religious and secular plays, folktales, romances and corridos, Mexican
narrative ballads celebrating the resistance of heroes to the forces of oppression.
The corrido is set to music. It is possible to say that the literary heritage of
Hispanic Americans stems from three historical eras: 1) the Mexican Indian
period prior to 1519 (the arrival of the Spanish); 2) the Spanish and Mexican
period between 1519 and 1848; and 3) the Anglo period from 1848 to the present.
Themes
Modern Hispanic American literature deals with similar topics to other ethnic
literatures – the quest for identity, questions of assimilation, the pursuit of the
American Dream, and the need for cultural survival. It often delineates conflicts
between Anglo and Latino cultures. Its authors pay particular attention to class
and gender issues. Religion (especially Catholicism) also plays an important role
in many works by Hispanic American writers. It is a literature that has a strong
sense of history and celebrates positive ethnic values, particularly the importance
of family and community. It stresses communal values regardless of whether this
involves strong ties to the land in rural areas or the deep solidarity among urban
people in barrios, Spanish-speaking quarters in American cities or towns. Among
other characteristic themes and subjects expressed by Latinos are the themes of
social protest, exploitation and the experience of migration.
Rudolfo Anaya
Chicano fiction is represented by its most renowned author, Rudolfo Anaya
(1937 - ). His Bless Me, Ultima (1972) is probably best-known of all Chicano
novels. It explores the impact of World War II on a small community in New
Mexico, Anaya’s native state. In its structure it is a bildungsroman focusing on a
Hispanic American’s coming of age in the 1940s. Anaya employs folklore from
both Mexico and his region, embodied by the traditional folkhealer Ultima, a
curandera, who is the protagonist’s spiritual guide. The beauty and magic of the
New Mexico landscape is disturbed by the testing of the atomic bomb at nearby
White Sands, an event which symbolizes the penetration of modern technology
into a seemingly intact world. Anaya is critical of some aspects of Catholicism, as
manifested in the protagonist’s loss of faith.
Exercise
Read an extract from Rudolfo Anaya’s novel Bless Me, Ultima (“Dieciocho”).
What is the protagonist, Antonio (Tony) Marez initiated to? What is his attitude
toward the church? What contributes to the flavor of Mexican American culture in
the extract?
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19
Sources
The Heath Anthology. 2584 - 2592.
The most prolific Chicano novelist, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith (1929 ),
recorded the life of the Chicano community in South Texas. Like Faulkner he also
created a fictional county, called Belken, and the fictitious Klail City. This
imaginary region appears in a cycle of novels, among which is Klail City: A Novel
(1987). South Texas is also the setting of the novel …y no se lo tragó la tierra /
And the Earth Did Not Part (1971), written by the much-respected poet and
novelist Tomás Rivera (1935 – 1984). He portrays the experience of Chicano
migrant farm workers in this book composed of sketches and vignettes,
retranslated and published later as …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.
Contemporary Chicano poetry is enriched by the working-class poet Gary Soto
(1952 - ), who manifests a strong identification with poor and oppressed social
outsiders. In his autobiographical poetry (e.g. Black Hair, 1985), written in free
verse, he uses images drawn from ordinary experience and popular culture. He
expresses a strong connection with his Mexican heritage.
Other Chicano
writers
The Chicana short story writer and poet Sandra Cisneros (1954 - ) presents the
tension between ethnic and gender identity in her work. Her story cycle The
House on Mango Street (1984) can also be read as a novel. The individual stories
or sketches are framed by the narrator, the teenage girl Esperanza, who seems to
represent Cisneros herself. She tells us about class, ethnic, and gender constraints
in an extremely poor urban barrio. The fragmentary character of the book, which
is written in simple language, corresponds to the fragmentary nature of the
narrator’s life. She is also noted for her collection of short stories Woman
Hollering Creek & Other Stories (1991). Another outstanding Chicana novelist
and poet is Ana Castillo (1953 - ). Her most popular novel, So Far From God
(1993), shows the lives and relationships of Latino women.
Chicana writers
Cuban Americans have found their voice in the work of Oscar Hijuelos (1951 - ) Cuban American
who became known with his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play and Puerto Rican
Songs of Love (1989). In it he portrayed two brothers who left Cuba and sought
American writers
their fortunes as singers in New York City in the early 1950s. He is appreciated
for his ability to introduce elements of magic realism into his novels. Puerto
Ricans have also enriched American literature thanks to Pedro Pietri (1944 - ).
He has given poetic accounts of Puerto Rican community, for example in his
collection of poems Puerto Rican Obituary (1973). The Puerto Rican heritage is
also the focus of the poetry of Judith Ortiz Cofer (1952 - ). She is the author of
numerous collections of poems, e.g. Latin Women Pray (1980). Her concerns are
not only ethnic, as she often pictures single-parent families, abandoned women
and other symptomatic features of the disintegration of the traditional family.
Exercise
Read the following sketches from Sandra Cisneros’s book The House on Mango
Street: “The House on Mango Street”, “Boys and Girls”, “My Name”, ”Bums in
the Attic”, “Alicia & I Talking on Edna’s Steps”, “A House of My Own” and
“Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes.” How is the contrast between the narrator’s
Název předmětu nebo jeho části nebo nic
20
dreams and reality conveyed? Give evidence of Cisneros’ attention to class issues.
Explain the symbolical meanings of Esperanza’s name.
Explain the allusions to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s poem “En
Mis Ojos No Hay Días”. What were her father’s “little terrors of his childhood”?
Interpret the conclusion of the poem “Latin Women Pray”.
Sources
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Books, 1991,
first edition: 1984.
The Heath Anthology. 2946 - 2948.
Summary
American literature is very diverse; it reflects the multicultural character of
American society. It consists of many literatures that tended, due to the traditional
“Anglo ethnocentric” view, to be overlooked in the past. They express the
experiences of different ethnic and racial groups that today are part of the
American mosaic. African American literature represents the largest body of
ethnic writing. It flourished for the first time during the Harlem Renaissance in the
1920s. Its major figure was Langston Hughes. In the following decades, the novel
of social and racial protest held sway, dominated by Richard Wright, Ralph
Ellison and James Baldwin. Women writers also enriched African American
literature, particularly Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Native American
literature received widespread acclaim in the late 1960s and the 1970s thanks to
N. Scott Momaday, Leslie M. Silko and other writers. It draws on a long oral
tradition, however many contemporary Native American writers employ modern
and postmodern devices. Asian American literature is very diverse. It is
represented by Chinese American authors (Maxine H. Kingston, Amy Tan, Frank
Chin, Gish Jen etc.), Japanese American writers (John Okada, Hisaye Yamamoto)
and also authors from other regions, for instance South Asia (Bharati Mukherjee).
Hispanic American literature has also contributed to the diversity of American
culture. The most significant representatives of this literature are the Chicano/a
writers Rudolfo Anaya, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Tomás Rivera, Sandra Cisneros,
and also Cuban Americans (Oscar Hijuelos) and authors of Puerto Rican descent
(Pedro Pietri, Judith O. Cofer). It is essential to realize that formerly marginal
minority literatures have been entering the center ground of the American cultural
mainstream. Their most common topics are the past (heritage) of individual ethnic
and racial groups, cultural and generational conflicts, assimilation, racial, class or
gender discrimination, and, last but not least, the search for identity.
Test
1. Which of these African American authors wrote in slavery?
a) Paul L. Dunbar
b) Charles W. Chesnutt
c) Phillis Wheatley
d) Alex Haley
1. Název kapitoly
2. Who is the author of the most important slave narrative written in the 19th
century?
3. Why were Du Bois and Booker T. Washington rivals?
4. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement of African American artists in
the
a) 1900s
b) 1920s
c) 1930s
d) 1960s
5. The New Negro movement was named after an essay by
a) Alain Locke
b) Langston Hughes
c) Jean Toomer
d) Harriet Beecher Stowe
6. Who is the main representative of the African American novel of racial
and social protest in the 1930s?
7. Who is the author of the novel Invisible Man?
a) James Baldwin
b) LeRoi Jones
c) John Edgar Wideman
d) Ralph Ellison
8. Which of these women writers is not African American?
a) Toni Morrison
b) Leslie Marmon Silko
c) Alice Walker
d) Toni Cade Bambara
9. What was the difference between Martin Luther King’s and Malcolm X’s
views?
10. What is Native Americans’ conception of time?
11. Which book started the Native American Renaissance?
a) House Made of Dawn
b) Ceremony
c) Black Elk Speaks
d) The Song of Hiawatha
12. Where are the novels House Made of Dawn and Ceremony set?
a) Montana
b) Washington
c) South Dakota
d) New Mexico
21
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13. What do the protagonists Abel and Tayo have in common?
14. Which of these writers is Native American?
a) Zora Neale Hurston
b) Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
c) James Welch
d) Bharati Mukherjee
15. Who is the author of Love Medicine?
16. Give one example of the discrimination of Asians in the history of the
United States.
17. What is the title of the loose sequel to Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel The
Woman Warrior?
18. What is the meaning of the word Nisei?
19. Which of these novels reflects the traumatic internment experience of the
Japanese Americans?
a) Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
b) No-No Boy
c) East Goes West
d) Darkness
20. Carlos Bulosan is a(n)
a) Filipino American writer
b) Indian American writer
c) Korean American writer
d) Mexican American writer
21. Indian immigrants to America are frequent protagonists in the work of
a) Younghill Kang
b) Standing Bear
c) Gus Lee
d) Bharati Mukherjee
22. Who are Chicanos?
23. What is corrido?
24. Bless Me, Ultima was written by
a) Tomás Rivera
b) Oscar Hijuleos
c) Rudolfo Anaya
d) Judith Ortiz Cofer
25. Who is the author of The House on Mango Street?
Řešení úloh
KEY
1.c, 2. Frederick Douglass, 3. They had different approach toward racial
advancement, 4. b, 5.a, 6. Richard Wright, 7.d, 8.b, 9. difference between the
non-violent and violent resolution of social and racial problems, 10. circular, 11.a,
12. d, 13. both of them are war veterans facing serious personal crises after their
return from World War II, 14.c, 15. Louise Erdrich, 16. Chinese Exclusion Act,
internment experience of the Japanese Americans in World War II, 17. China
Men, 18. American-born Japanese, the second generation of Japanese immigrants,
19.b, 20.a, 21.d, 22. Americans of Mexican descent (Mexican Americans), 23.
Mexican narrative ballad, 24. c, 25. Sandra Cisneros.
23
25
LITERATURE
1. Baker, Houston A., Jr., ed. Three American Literatures. New York: The
Modern Language Association of America, 1982.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Vol
7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
3. Bloom, Harold, ed. Asian-American Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1999.
4. Bruccoli, Matthew U., et al., eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography (Series).
Detroit: Gale, 1978v
(This well-known series includes a number of useful reference books on
multicultural literature, such as Afro-American Fiction Writers after 1955
(Vol. 33), Afro-American Poets since 1955 (Vol. 41), Chicano Writers (Vols.
82, 122, 209), Native American Writers of the United States (Vol. 175),
Twentieth-Century American Western Writers (Vols. 186, 206, and 210).
5. “Contemporary U.S. Literature. Multicultural Perspectives.” U.S. Society &
Values. 5 (2000): 1.
6. Chin, Frank et al., eds. Aiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers.
Washington: Howard University Press, 1974.
7. Cortina, Rodolfo, ed. Hispanic Literature: An Anthology. Lincolnwood, IL:
NTC Pub. Group, 1997.
8. Gates, Henry L. and McKay, Nellie Y., eds. Norton Anthology of African
American Literature. New York: Norton, 1996.
9. Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings
and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.
10. Lauter, Paul et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 2 Vols.
Lexington, MA: Heath, 1994.
11. Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, ed. Asian American Literature: An Anthology.
Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Group, 2000.
12. Lopez, Tiffany A., ed. Growing Up Chicana/o: An Anthology. New York:
Morrow, 1993.
13. Peck, David R. American Ethnic Literatures. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press,
1992.
14. Rico, Barbara R., and Sandra Mano: American Mosaic. Multicultural
Readings in Context. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991.
15. Shirley, Carl R., and Paula W. Shirley. Understanding Chicano Literature.
Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
16. Trout, Lawana, comp. Native American Literature: An Anthology.
Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Group, 1999.
17. Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature : A Brief Introduction and
Anthology. New York: HarperCollins College, 1995.
Useful Web Sites:
Asian American literature:
http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/ethnicstudies/asian/
http://www.scraal.com
African American literature
http://www.africana.com/
26
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Hispanic American literature
http://www.hispaniconline.com/
Native American literature
http://www.ipl.org/ref/native
27
NOTES