The Rise of Multicultural America

Melting Pots & Mosaics: Children of Immigrants in US-American Literature

“…[w]hen we MLA members teach languages other than our native or first idiom and the cultures and histories embedded in those languages, when we read 'foreign' texts in 39 | For a succinct critical overview and discussion of many of the concepts involved, see Burke 2009. For representative studies, see, for example, Suárez-Orozco 2004, Friedman and Randeria 2004, Ilmberger and Robinson 2002, Appadurai 2001Appiah 2006, Stanton 2006, Breckenridge 2002Gilroy 2005, Huggan 2001, Behdad 2000, Fludernik 1998Mayer 2005, Fludernik 2003, Mishra 1996, Clifford 1994Limón 2008, Liang 2002, Mignolo 2002, Lenz 2000, Hawley 1996and Mizruchi 2008, Kelly 2003, Trotman 2002, Boelhower and Hornung 2000, Antonette 1998, Werbner and Modood 1997 on more recent multiculturalism.Caveat: In the evocations of an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, it is often ignored -owed to the hubris of a teleology of complexity -that the world has for literally thousands of years been quite interconnected, dynamic, heterogeneous and "transcultural" (just as personal identities have never been simple), as recent global histories show (for example Jürgen Osterhammel's magisterial history of the 19th century (2009) or the collection of essays edited by Conrad et al (2007); see also Alexander Demandt's recent biography of Alexander the Great [2009]). One should recall that while the internet and the world wide web have certainly facilitated and accelerated communication and exchange, the invention of the telegraph in the 19 th century constituted an at least equally drastic global change in communication.…”

“…19 Race is popularly used to denote belonging based on a presumably shared genotype of all members, which is then assumed to express itself in phenotype and other presumably inherited characteristics such as "intelligence," "talents" and behavioral and moral preferences. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is often 19 | For an overview and continuation of the critical debate, see Burke 2009, Mizruchi 2008, Ueda 2006. For the histories and interconnections of race, ethnicity and related issues, see Healey 2009, Schaefer 2005, Azuma 2005, Werbner 1997, Glick Schiller 1992 understood as a category of cultural identity denoting shared practices, norms, values and traditions of a given minority group.…”

“…For theoretical discussions, see Breinig 2002;Boelhower and Hornung 2000;Bennett 1998;Kymlicka 1995, Taylor 1992. For critical histories, see Mizruchi 2008;Trotman 2002;Takaki 1993. For critical collections, see Chae 2008;Kelly 2003;Goldberg 1995. It is interesting to note that on its homepage the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) of the United States provides a document called "What Are the Benefits and Responsibilities of Citizenship?"…”