American Ethnic Literature
Introduction Literature is usually defined by genre: poetry, plays, humor, science-fiction, drama and so on. Literature is also sometimes defined by ethnicity; French literature, English literature and so on. This paper tackles a rather more difficult subject: American ethnic literature. We‘ll try to define it and determine what it means. Discussion The reason ―American ethnic literature‖ is so very difficult to define is that there is no single ethnic type known as an ―American.‖ All Americans are made up of people who came to the U.S. from someplace else; or they were here before the first newcomers arrived. Over the centuries since the founding of the nation, more and more groups of immigrants have come to add their talents to the nation: the Irish were among the largest groups, coming in the early 1800s; the latest ―wave‖ is that of Asians, coming since the 1960s. All of the newcomers bring skills, ways of thinking and beliefs that are different from ―mainstream‖ (whatever that means) America, and by challenging long held dogma, they force us to reconsider our beliefs. All of this is unsettling, but it ultimately makes the nation stronger. Today many people discuss allowing immigrants to retain their own culture and learn about American culture at the same time, but that wasn‘t always the case. For many years, it was the goal of immigrants to ―assimilate‖—they wanted to become Americans as soon as po