This volume of collected essays offers truly multiethnic, historically comparative, and meta-theoretical readings of the literature and culture of the United States. Covering works by a diverse set of American authors - from Toni Morrison to Bret Harte - these essays provide a vital supplement to the critical literary canon, mapping a newly variegated terrain that refuses the distinction between "ethnic" and "nonethnic" literatures.

This volume of collected essays offers truly multiethnic, historically comparative, and meta-theoretical readings of the literature and culture of the United States. Covering works by a diverse set of American authors - from Toni Morrison to Bret Harte - these essays provide a vital supplement to the critical literary canon, mapping a newly variegated terrain that refuses the distinction between "ethnic" and "nonethnic" literatures.