Welcome to Topics in Ethnic American Literature

For many years, critics have argued about the definition of both ethnicity and ethnic American fiction. In this class, we will attempt to place literature written by a variety of "ethnic" authors into a comparative context. We have spent our first week reading short stories by turn-of-the-century immigrant authors, such as Sui Sin Far and Abraham Cahan. Next, we will turn our attention to the slave narrative, and ask whether the slave narrative can be considered an example of ethnic fiction or whether we need to read African American narrative apart from the stories of other so-called ethnic writers. How are race and ethnicity intertwined in our culture? If we compare stories across racial and ethnic lines, do we erase the very important differences between the history of slavery and immigration in America? We will begin by reading Frederick Douglass' slave narrative and see how Toni Morrison has worked to revise and re-envision the slave narrative in her magisterial novel Beloved. In the coming weeks, we will seek to create a working definition of ethnic American literature and think about the myriad ways in which ethnicity plays into our daily lives and our conceptions of American national identity.