New Strangers in Paradise : The Immigrant Experience and Contemporary American Fiction

by Muller, Gilbert H.

• ISBN13: 9780813121345
• ISBN10: 0813121345
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

Historians and social scientists have frequently examined the impact of post-war immigration on American culture. Until now, literary critics have not. New Strangers in Paradise offers the first in-depth account of the ways in which contemporary American fiction has been shaped by the successive weaves of immigrants to reach U.S. shores in the past fifty years. Gilbert Muller reveals how the intersections of peoples, regions, and competing cultural histories have remade the American cultural landscape in the aftermath of World War II. Muller focuses on Holocaust survivors, Chicanos, Latinos, African Carribeans, and Asian Americans. In their quest for an American identity, each of these groups has sought and revitalized the America dream of riches and bounty for all. The successive waves of immigrants are examined in the cultural and historical context both on America and of the lands from which they originated. Muller offers a fresh perspective on the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, William Styron, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Oscar Hijuelos, Jamaica Kincaid, Bharati Mukherjee, Rudolfo Anaya, and many others. These writers cross and recross national boundaries, creating a new canon that reveals the evolution of a multi-cultural, pluralistic, incipiently transnational civilization.

Author Biography

Gilbert H. Muller, professor of English and special assistant to the president at the LaGuardia campus of the City University of New York, is the author of numerous articles, textbooks, and critical studies.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
1 Promised Land Postwar Fiction and the Immigrant Experience	1	(26)
2 Haunted by the Holocaust Displaced Persons and the American Dream	27	(32)
3 Migrant Souls The Chicano Quest for National Identity	59	(34)
4 Metropolitan Dreams Latino Voyagers from the Caribbean	93	(46)
5 Middle Passage The African-Caribbean Diaspora	139	(32)
6 Gold Mountains The Asian-American Odyssey	171	(46)
7 Searching for America	217	(22)
Bibliography	239	(18)
Index	257