Contemporary Jewish American Writers and the Multicultural Dilemma: Return of the Exiled (review)

Scholars and publishers who established and now vigilantly control the multicultural literary canon err intellectually and culturally in their exclusion of Euro-ethnic writers who are neither "people of color" nor perceived to be currently economically, socially, or politically oppressed. These touchstones unnecessarily limit and significantly distort multiculturalism. Inclusion based on literatures of distinctive cultural identities that compose the American fabric would offer a more diverse reading experience, one marked by atypical or singular language, philosophy, theology, social and historic experience. These criteria would offer an accurate representation of the broad diversity that characterizes multicultural American society and literature.

Multicultural literature, as currently identified in anthologies and college courses is not, as the name suggests, open to varied cultures. Instead, it is a restricted venue clearly posting "not wanted" signs for ethnic Euro-American literatures and Jewish American literature. If the literature is not African-, Asian-, Hispanic- or Native-American or another literature designated as produced by "people of color," that has been marginalized, it is excluded or excised from the anthologies, and therefore absent from the multicultural classroom. Jewish American writing is (mis)perceived as not being "marginalized" in the traditional American literary canon.

Andrew Furman's Contemporary Jewish American Writers and the Multicultural Dilemma: Return of the Exiled, focuses attention on neglect of Jewish American writing in the multicultural agenda. He captures the distress many literary scholars have voiced in Modern Language Association and American Literature Association conference sessions addressing the exclusion of this writing from the anthologies and course curricula where they had expected the literature to find a welcome home. Furman meticulously maps the failure of anthologists of "minority literature" in a tightly reasoned analysis of the sociology of this exclusion. He argues persuasively for the inclusion of Euro-American ethnic writers in the new and revised canon and curriculum.

Furman adds his voice to scholars from a variety of disciplines published in The Narrow Bridge: Jewish Views on Multiculturalism (1996) and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (1998) whose concerns he shares. Throughout this text Furman reveals a wide-ranging knowledge of the multi-ethnic canon, its theorists' and practitioners' strengths, as well as offering a cogent critique of their myopic perception of American literary diversity. He contextualizes his discussion with references to the omissions and shortcomings of otherwise excellent multiculturalist texts such as the Heath Anthology of American Literature and the Modern Language Association's Redefining American Literary History. He illustrates the paradox of Jewish writers' exclusion and delineates the cultural and historic indices distinguishing Jewish writing from "mainstream" American writing. Many multiculturalists have failed to recognize that Jews have, to borrow Cynthia Ozick's apt phrase, "a recognizable cultural matrix" ¹ that distinguishes their writing from mainstream American literature.

The immense value of Furman's book to American literature studies is twofold: first in his clear and abundant presentation of the evidence of exclusion of Jewish writers and second in elucidating the work of a representative group of neglected, but significant writers. Furman is culturally and theoretically attuned; his prose avoids the off-putting theoretical jargon that often plagues contemporary literary criticism. His knowledge of critical theory illuminates these analyses yet he refrains from the rhetorical excesses that obfuscate the literature being examined.

Central to Furman's cogent argument for inclusion of Jewish writers in multicultural texts and evidence of the further irony of the absence of contemporary Jewish American fiction is that it occurs at a time when the younger writers have begun to assert their Jewish identities and values with an unprecedented intensity, displacing themes of alienation and acculturation prevalent in previous decades. In a 1983 article in Contemporary Literature, I argued, similarly, that Irving Howe and Leslie Fiedler had been premature in sounding the death-knell for Jewish American literature. I called instead for recognition of the already evident renaissance in American...