Research Guide to American Literature

ingly more obvious as writers added their voices. Arte Público Press, founded
in 1979, for example, brought attention to both Cuban American and Puerto
Rican, or “Nuyorican,” literature in addition to Chicano/a writers. Works by
Puerto Rican American writers represent the second largest contributions to
Hispanic American literature and include writers Judith Ortiz Cofer, Sandra
María Esteves, Victor Hernández Cruz, Tato Laviera, Esmeralda Santiago, Piri
Thomas, and Ed Vega. The next largest belongs to Cuban Americans, who
include Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Cristina García, and Oscar Hijuelos, the first
Hispanic American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, for The Mambo Kings
Play Songs of Love (1989). Asian Americans are equally diverse; among them are
writers whose ancestors come from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, India,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma. Hwang and Gish Jen are
Chinese Americans; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Chang-rae Lee are Korean
American writers; Jessica Hagedorn is Filipino American; Japanese Americans
include Kimiko Hahn, Garrett Kaoru Hongo, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, and
Janice Mirikitani; Americans with roots in India include Meena Alexander,
Bharati Mukherjee, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Writers with Asian heritage who grew
up in Hawaii, described as “local,” are Nora Okja Keller, Chris McKinney,
Cathy Song, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Gay Latino and Asian Americans added
their voices to further underscore diversity. Just as women writers delineated a
“double marginalization” as women and racial/ethnic others, works by Arturo
Islas, Rane Arroyo, Kitty Tsui, and Andrew Lam describe being outsiders in
terms of race and sexuality, which also led to their ostracization by both their
root and the mainstream cultures.
Since the 1990s works by ethnic Americans have brought increasing atten-
tion to international factors that affect the cultural makeup of the United States.
Political instability in the Dominican Republic is represented in the works of Julia
Alvarez and Junot Díaz, as is the exile experience of Vietnamese immigrants in
works by Lan Cao and Andrew X. Pham. Other changes also affect the cultural
landscape of America. Steven George Salaita notes that since the terrorist attacks
of 11 September 2001, Arab Americans “are being analyzed widely and system-
atically as a discrete ethnic community.” Literary works by Arab Americans resist
orientalist stereotypes while also revealing the diversity of their authors. In terms
of religion, for example, Arab America is not monolithic. As Salaita notes, they
“are Muslim (Shia and Sunni and Alawi and Isma’ili), Christian... , Jewish... ,
Druze, Bahai... immigrants and fifth-generation Americans... religious and secu-
lar, White and Black, Latin American and Canadian.” And, he adds, “Sometimes
[they] are non-Arabs such as Circassians, Armenians, Berbers, Kurds, and Irani-
ans.” Arab American poetry has a long tradition in American letters and includes
works by Naomi Shihab Nye and Agha Shahid Ali. Arab American fiction writ-
ers include Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki, Diana Abu-Jaber, Rabih Alameddine, Laila
Halaby, and Laila Lalami.
While the lines between foreign nationals, immigrants, and those born in
America (first-generation vs. second-generation, Asian vs. Asian American, or

Multiculturalism and Globalization 7