In this Book
- Challenges of Diversity: Essays on America
- Book
- 2017
- Published by: Rutgers University Press
summary
What unites and what divides Americans as a nation? Who are we, and can we strike a balance between an emphasis on our divergent ethnic origins and what we have in common? Opening with a survey of American literature through the vantage point of ethnicity, Werner Sollors examines our evolving understanding of ourselves as an Anglo-American nation to a multicultural one and the key role writing has played in that process.
Challenges of Diversity contains stories of American myths of arrival (pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, slave ships at Jamestown, steerage passengers at Ellis Island), the powerful rhetoric of egalitarian promise in the Declaration of Independence and the heterogeneous ends to which it has been put, and the recurring tropes of multiculturalism over time (e pluribus unum, melting pot, cultural pluralism). Sollors suggests that although the transformation of this settler country into a polyethnic and self-consciously multicultural nation may appear as a story of great progress toward the fulfillment of egalitarian ideals, deepening economic inequality actually exacerbates the divisions among Americans today.
Table of Contents
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- Introduction
- pp. 3-18
- 1. Literature and Ethnicity
- pp. 19-66
- 3. Dedicated to a Proposition
- pp. 95-120
- 4. A Critique of Pure Pluralism
- pp. 121-144
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 205-206
- About the Author
- p. 216
Additional Information
ISBN
9780813589350
Related ISBN(s)
9780813589329, 9780813589336, 9780813589343, 9780813595443
MARC Record
OCLC
1000298049
Pages
214
Launched on MUSE
2018-04-06
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2017