Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism: Slovaks and Other New Immigrants in the Interwar Era
"Alexander provides a...complex story of ethnic activism, cultural pride, and dual identity...[she] provides an excellent account of how ethnic activists made a concerted effort to combine American popular culture with ethnic heritage in order to advance Slovak community objectives...[T]his well-written account reminds us of the durability and complexity of ethnicity in America." American Historical Review "Alexander offers a nuanced understanding of the differences between tradition-bound immigrants and their American-born children," Contemporary Sociology "Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism succeeds admirably in shedding light on how Slovak immigrants and their children experienced America. [It] is an important contribution to the field of American immigration and ethnic history." The Journal of American Ethnic History "a well-balanced, highly readable case study. Alexander has provided a useful approach to understanding the dynamics of accommodation, adjustment, and assimilation." Choice "Polish Americans can learn some valuable things about themselves and their Slovak-American neighbors from this book." The Polish American Journal "Alexander's analysis and evidence is impressive. Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism explores Slovaks in the United States over three decades in a way that makes connections to other groups and to a range of issues in immigration and ethnic history. This book will speak to a wide readership, and it makes a good case that there need not be a fundamental contradiction between the 'ethnic impulse' and the Americanizing one." --Thomas Dublin, Department of History, State University of New York at Binghamton, and author of Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-1986 "Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism is a revealing and unique look into the dynamics of an American ethnic community during the first half of the twentieth century. Alexander focuses tightly on the Slovak-American community and its constantly changing political goals and social activities. In doing so, she is able to explain how this particular group creatively sought to construct an identity for itself in the United States and adjust to American life. The portrait here of a second generation not alienated from the first is vivid and fresh." --John Bodnar, Chancellor's Professor and Chair History, Indiana University "June Granatir Alexander has written an important book that challenges many of the assumptions of recent whiteness studies. The great strength of this clearly written refreshingly jargon-free book is that it examines Slovak life on its own terms rather than from the perspective of some ideological construct that has little to do with actual lived experience." The Journal of American History