Description
Book SynopsisWhat unites and what divides Americans as a nation? Opening with a survey of American literature through the vantage point of ethnicity, Werner Sollors examines the changing self-understanding of the United States from an Anglo-American to a multicultural country and the role writing has played in that process.
Trade Review"Sollors is an epochal figure in his field, an inventive and risk-taking thinker who is expanding the scope of African American and American scholarship." -- Tom Socca * Boston Phoenix *
"Werner Sollors is a highly sophisticated and discerning commentator on the cluster of issues that Americans associate with the word diversity. The essays collected here are among his finest." -- David Hollinger * coeditor of The American Intellectual Tradition: A Sourcebook *
“A thoroughly thoughtful and thought-provoking read from beginning to end,
Challenges of Diversity: Essays on America is an inherently engaging, impressively informed and informative, exceptionally well reasoned, written, and organized work of original scholarship that is unreserved recommended for both community and academic library collections.”
* Midwest Book Review *
"Sollors is an epochal figure in his field, an inventive and risk-taking thinker who is expanding the scope of African American and American scholarship." -- Tom Socca * Boston Phoenix *
"Werner Sollors is a highly sophisticated and discerning commentator on the cluster of issues that Americans associate with the word diversity. The essays collected here are among his finest." -- David Hollinger * coeditor of The American Intellectual Tradition: A Sourcebook *
“A thoroughly thoughtful and thought-provoking read from beginning to end,
Challenges of Diversity: Essays on America is an inherently engaging, impressively informed and informative, exceptionally well reasoned, written, and organized work of original scholarship that is unreserved recommended for both community and academic library collections.”
* Midwest Book Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 3
1 Literature and Ethnicity 19
2 National Identity and Ethnic Diversity 67
3 Dedicated to a Proposition 95
4 A Critique of Pure Pluralism 121
5 The Multiculturalism Debate as Cultural Text 145
Notes 177
Acknowledgments 205
Index 207
