Choice 评论
This collection responds to the need for new approaches to ethnic fiction and autobiography, providing both students and teachers with new ways to study ethnic writers. The editors assume that much ethnic literature defies traditional literary conventions and critical approaches. Essays by well-known scholars focus on Native American, African American, Mexican American, and Asian American writers, including Black Elk, N. Scott Momoday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Rudolfo Anaya, Luis Valdez, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodriguez, Carlos Bulosan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Hisaye Yamamoto, and Amy Tan. The editors use these writers to illuminate the dominant themes of marginality, identity, and alienation. The contributors explore issues of gender, assimilation, and acculturation, demonstrating how ethnic consciousness is expressed in literature. Of special interest is how each essay develops critical approaches to explore a range of genres and historical periods, using, for example, feminist criticism, mythological approaches, and new historicism while reconceptualizing methodological and pedagogical methods. Each writer analyzes specific texts, respecting cultural differences and providing usable ways to teach the literature in a variety of courses. Several contributors provide historical contexts for the literature, and all include useful study questions and bibliographies. All collections. G. M. Bataille University of California, Santa Barbara