1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910795079403321

Autore

Sollors Werner

Titolo

Challenges of diversity : essays on America / / Werner Sollors

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Brunswick, New Jersey : , : Rutgers University Press, , 2017

ISBN

0-8135-8934-7

0-8135-8935-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource

Classificazione

LIT004020LIT004040SOC008000SOC001000SOC031000HIS036000

Disciplina

810.9/358

Soggetti

National characteristics, American, in literature

American literature - History and criticism

Multiculturalism in literature

Ethnicity in literature

Race in literature

Immigrants in literature

HISTORY / United States / General

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African American

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / General

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Challenges of Diversity -- Introduction -- 1. Literature and Ethnicity -- 2. National Identity and Ethnic Diversity -- 3. Dedicated to a Proposition -- 4. A Critique of Pure Pluralism -- 5. The Multiculturalism Debate as Cultural Text -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.