Fifties Ethnicities
Subtitle: The Ethnic Novel and Mass Culture at Midcentury
By: Tracy Floreani
Series: SUNY series in Multiethnic Literature
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 179
ISBN-13: 9781438447698
Subjects: Immigrants in literature; Minority authors; Ethnicity in literature; History and criticism; American literature; American fiction
Description: "Fifties Ethnicities brings together a variety of texts to explore what it meant to be American in the middle of "America's Century." In a series of comparative readings that draws on novels, television programs, movie magazines, and films, Tracy Floreani crosses generic boundaries to show how literature and mass media worked to mold concepts of ethnicity in the 1950s. Revisiting well-known novels of the period, such as Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, as well as less-studied works, such as William Saroyan's Rock Wagram and C. Y. Lee's The Flower Drum Song (the original source of the more famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical), Floreani investigates how the writing of ethnic identity called into question the ways in which signifiers of Americanness also inherently privileged whiteness. By putting these novels into conversation with popular media narratives such as I Love Lucy, the author offers an in-depth examination of the boundaries and possibilities for participating in American culture in an era that greatly influenced national ideas about identity. While midcentury mass media presented an undeniably engaging vision of American success, national belonging, and guidelines for cultural citizenship, Floreani argues that minority writers and artists were, at the same time, engaging that vision and implicitly participating in its construction." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-171) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Cultural narratives and American identities; title: The land of plenty: American mass culture and the literary immigrant in C.Y. Lee's The Flower Drum Song and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita; title: What's for sale: consumer fantasy, American women, and  social mobility in Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha and The I Love Lucy Show; title: The celluloid fantasy: negotiating the ethnic male star image in William Saroyan's Rock Wagram; title: Leaving the dark room in a lighter mood: narrating invisibility in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.