Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American
The stories and memoirs in this collection are great: Sherman Alexie, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, E. L. Doctorow, Sandra Cisneros, and many more of our best writers deal directly, but never simplistically, with the conflicts of becoming American. They personalize what you lose by crossing borders, what you leave behind, what you gain, what America gains. They write with humor and poignancy, rooted in particulars that speak to everyone about dislocation, about being an outsider at school, in the neighborhood, at home. Some stories will be new to most readers; some are often anthologized. In her fine introduction, Jennifer Gillan points out that the stories show empathy without sweet nostalgia or any idealization of ethnicity. This kind of collection, with its literary quality and multiple perspectives, is the best answer to those who expect only messages with multiculturalism and who sneer "P.C."at the mention of diversity.Hazel Rochman