The Invisible Ethnic: Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Rodriguez, and Ethnic Literature
Journal: Journal of Language and Literature
Year: 2021

This essay explores the possibilities and constraints of reading texts as ethnic literature. It does so by tracing the master theme of transcendence in Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and by drawing comparisons with Latino autobiographer and essayist Richard Rodriguez. To date Speak, Memory has transcended categorization as a particular conception of ethnic literature that precludes also reading it as universal. Rodriguez, in contrast, laments that his books are less likely to be read as univer