This chapter notes how traditional American gothic literature has been largely motivated by racial dread and fears of miscegenation. It then argues that many contemporary ethno-fiction writers repurpose gothic tropes and idioms to two ends. The first is to critique anxieties of American gothic in order to expose the racialism embedded in the assimiliationist and hegemonic narrative of upward mobility defined by the ethnic ‘melting pot’. The second is to use these gothic redeployments imaginatively to disinter the voices of those legions who have died and disappeared, un-mourned.
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