Immigration and American Popular Culture: An Introduction (Nation of Newcomers)
“Rachel Rubin and Jeff Melnick show us the skinny on pop's melting pot. The cauldron does not burn off immigrant character, creating American sameness, but intensifies its many tastes. Ladle after ladle of ethnic infusions go into the pot—ScarfacetoGypsy Punks, pachuco zoot suiters to Ravi Shankar, Jimmy Cliff toWest Side Story. They compound the terms of race and place until they reform the mainstream. And, suddenly, that old wasp canon has become just another ethnic style.”- W. T. Lhamon, Jr.,author, most recently, ofJump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture“A thought-provoking examination of immigration history”-Choice,“Eloquently written”-Popular Music,“In this eminently readable and insightful overview of U.S. cultural history in the last century, Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey provide a view into the roiling production of American culture.”-Journal of American Ethnic History,“A sprawling and uniquely synthetic account of the role immigrants have played as performers, entrepreneurs, and as the subjects of the mass culture industry. Brings a stunning, transnational array of immigrant cultural forms, immigration policies, and cohorts together in new and important ways.”-Rachel Ida Buff,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee