Comparative analyses of recent ethnic writing that has enlarged the spectrum of
American literature.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, John Blair Gamber, Stephen Hong Sohn, and Gina
Valentino, eds., Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).
Collection of thirteen essays on the transnational and diasporic aspects of Asian
American literature. Writers discussed include Ha Jin, Maxine Hong Kingston,
Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee, and Karen Tei Yamashita.
Francisco Lomelí, ed., Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Litera-
ture and Art (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993).
Collection of fifteen essays examining Hispanic literature (from the sixteenth
century to the present) with a variety of approaches.
Emmanuel S. Nelson, ed., The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American
Literature: A–Z (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005).
Accessible resource providing information on hundreds of ethnic American
authors, works, topics, and traditions.
David Palumbo-Liu, ed., The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interven-
tions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
Essays that delineate the historical, theoretical, and practical considerations of
canon formation for ethnic American literatures. Overall, they suggest strategies
of incorporating texts without losing a sense of their historical specificity and
differences.
Ishmael Reed, ed., MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace (New
York: Viking, 1997).
Anthology of essays, including personal reflections, by writers who argue against
monoculturalism in American society and art. The introduction by Reed sets
forth an argument for multiculturalism.
Steven George Salaita, Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Focuses on the development of contemporary Arab American literature with
the purpose of defining it in more-complex ways than has been done in previous
studies. Salaita uses interpretive methods drawn from Native American literary
studies to propose new interpretive approaches.
Jelena Šesnić, From Shadow to Presence: Representations of Ethnicity in Contempo-
rary American Literature (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2007).
Describes four comparative approaches to multicultural literature: cultural
nationalism, ethnic feminism, borderlands and contact zones, and the diasporic
model.
Bonnie TuSmith, All My Relatives: Community in Contemporary Ethnic American
Literatures (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
Proposes alternatives to the practice of reading works by ethnic Americans
through Euro-American contexts.