For many years, America cherished its image as a Golden Door for the world's oppressed. But during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, mounting racial hostility along with new national legislation that imposed strict restrictions on immigration began to show the nation in a different light. The literature of this period reflects the controversy and uncertainty that abounded regarding the meaning of "American." Literary output participated in debates about restriction, assimilation, and whether the idea of the "Melting Pot" was worth preserving. Writers advocated-and also challenged-what emerged as a radical new way of understanding the nation's ethnic and racial identity: cultural pluralism.

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Chronology	p. ix
Introduction: The Literature of the New Chill	p. xiii
A Note on the Text	p. xxi
The Restriction/Open Door Debate	p. 1
Text of the Chinese Exclusion Act	p. 7
The New Colossus	p. 11
Unguarded Gates	p. 12
Twelve Hundred More	p. 14
John Chinaman in New York	p. 16
Poems of Angel Island: [Instead of remaining a citizen of China], [Being idle in the wooden building], [Four days before the Qiqiao Festival], [The young children do not yet know worry], Crude Poem Inspired by the Landscape, and [For one month I was imprisoned]	p. 18
Songs of Gold Mountain: [At a moment of tremendous opportunity] and [Spring returns to the continent]	p. 20
The Biography of a Chinaman	p. 21
Veronika and the Angelinos	p. 30
What Is an American? The Suicide of the Anglo-American	p. 39
Don't Bite the Hand That's Feeding You	p. 47
The Promised Land	p. 49
The Americanization of Roll-Down Joe	p. 57
Mother America	p. 65
Alma Mater: The Immigrant at Columbia	p. 67
The Assimilation Debate	p. 69
True Americanism	p. 75
Ellis Island	p. 85
The Alien	p. 86
Moses	p. 90
Old China	p. 91
Songs of Gold Mountain: [Since I left South China]	p. 92
The Lie	p. 93
A Great Man	p. 110
The Wisdom of the New	p. 119
The Foreigner	p. 135
America	p. 138
Dead Are My People	p. 139
A Simple Act of Piety	p. 143
I Dreamt I Was a Donkey-Boy Again	p. 158
On Being Black	p. 160
A Slavic Oklahoman	p. 164
The Melting Pot Debate	p. 171
Americanization	p. 177
The Melting Pot	p. 180
The Argentines, the Portuguese, and the Greeks	p. 181
Sweet Burning Incense	p. 183
Salvatore Schneider-A Story of New York	p. 190
Uncle Wellington's Wives	p. 199
The Apostate of Chego-Chegg	p. 224
Maggie's Minstrel	p. 239
The Alien in the Melting Pot	p. 250
Chinaman, Laundryman	p. 251
Rickshaw Boy	p. 254
A Yellow Man and a White	p. 257
The Old Lamp	p. 268
Happiness	p. 277
The Cultural Pluralism Debate	p. 279
Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot: A Study of American Nationality	p. 284
Trans-National America	p. 306
Introduction	p. 319
Foreign Country	p. 320
Paderewski	p. 321
A Polish Girl	p. 322
The Island of Desire	p. 323
The Greenhorn in America	p. 332
Songs of Gold Mountain: [Husband: his foolishness is second to none], [Husband: so dumb, second to none], [American ways are very extreme]	p. 340
Unconverted	p. 342
Kalaun, the Elephant Trainer	p. 346
The Tooth of Antar	p. 355
H.R.H. The Prince of Hester Street	p. 364
Sources	p. 377
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