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;Read the Introduction.
"Thanks again to Werner Sollors for oxygenating our thoughts on
race and identity, and their relationship to that holy dunce, the
literary imagination. Intelligently multicultural, this compendium
provokes and entertains even as it exposes still-live nerves.
Sollors' scholarship is erudite but relevant; his choices speak
with tactful passion about matters which touch us all."
--Gish Jen, author of "Mona in the Promised Land"
"Many startling textual artifacts included."
--"The New York Times"
"The first in English devoted to work that Mr. Sollors says has
typically been overlooked, an orphan literature belonging to no
clear ethnic or national tradition."
--"New York Times"
"The scope of this collection is impressive. The introduction is
invaluable, providing much-needed context. The volume's topic and
scope make it a valuable resource."
--"Choice"
"No one has done more important work to place interracial
association at the center of American culture than Werner Sollors.
This extraordinarily rich anthology is an excellent addition to the
study of this fascinating subject."
--Randall Kennedy, author of "Interracial Intimacies: Sex,
Marriage, Identity & Adoption"
"Werner Sollors's dazzling collection will enrich our
understanding of constructions of race and identity in fresh and
provocative ways and will intrigue anyone who cares about
literature."
--Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University
"An essential book for those contending with race and
literature. With this collection it is clear that race is a
category that has been marked both as a boundary that cannot be
crossed and as aseparation that is constantly breached. A necessary
and crucial contribution."
--Gerald Early, Washington University in St. Louis
"Recommended for academic libraries and for any reader working
around the race rubric"
--"Library Journal"
A white knight meets his half-black half-brother in battle. A
black hero marries a white woman. A slave mother kills her child by
a rapist-master. A white-looking person of partly African ancestry
passes for white. A master and a slave change places for a single
night. An interracial marriage turns sour. The birth of a child
brings a crisis. Such are some of the story lines to be found
within the pages of An Anthology of Interracial Literature.
This is the first anthology to explore the literary theme of
black-white encounters, of love and family stories that cross--or
are crossed by--what came to be considered racial boundaries. The
anthology extends from Cleobolus' ancient Greek riddle to tormented
encounters in the modern United States, visiting along the way a
German medieval chivalric romance, excerpts from "Arabian Nights"
and Italian Renaissance novellas, scenes and plays from Spain,
Denmark, England, and the United States, as well as essays,
autobiographical sketches, and numerous poems. The authors of the
selections include some of the great names of world literature
interspersed with lesser-known writers. Themes of interracial love
and family relations, passing, and the figure of the Mulatto are
threaded through the volume.
An Anthology of Interracial Literature allows scholars,
students, and general readers to grapple with the extraordinary
diversity in world literature. As multi-racial identification
becomes more widespreadthe ethnic and cultural roots of world
literature takes on new meaning.
Contributors include: Hans Christian Andersen, Gwendolyn Brooks,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles W. Chesnutt, Lydia Maria Child,
Kate Chopin, Countee Cullen, Caroline Bond Day, Rita Dove,
Alexandre Dumas, Olaudah Equiano, Langston Hughes, Victor Hugo,
Charles Johnson, Adrienne Kennedy, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Guy
de Maupassant, Claude McKay, Eugene O'Neill, Alexander Pushkin, and
Jean Toomer.