ENGL 385 American Ethnic Literature

the famous rabbit-duck picture Gregory Eiselein

Course Description for ENGL 385 American Ethnic Literature

Lan Cao

Using fiction, autobiography, drama, and even some poetry and song, this course explores the connections between ethnic identity, literature, and culture in the United States. Rather than focus on one tradition, we will read works by writers with divergent racial and ethnic histories: African American, American Jewish, Asian American, Latino, and American Indian. These texts will provide a foundation for examining the combinations of identification and alienation that make up an "ethnic" identity. Other topics include the notion of "America" as a multi-culture, race and ideology, immigrant experiences and class, "strangeness" (as a theme, style, and context), and cultural encounters with "others."

Our focus will be the telling of life stories and cultural experiences by writers from selected and differing ethnic communities and pasts. Many of the texts we will study this semester will be of a more or less autobiographical nature; some are autobiographies, some are deeply rooted in the author's life experiences, and others are fictionalized histories and personal narrative. We will also experiment with the creation of our own autobiographies.

Throughout the semester I'd like us to consider two issues in particular: (1) questions about the "self" (where does the self come from? how does a writer construct a self? to what extent does an ethnic community shape a sense of self?) and (2) the problems and possibilities of difference (racism and ethnic prejudice, "the melting pot," e. pluribus unum, America as a multiculture). We will also ponder the ways ethnic differences participate in the construction of the self.

Course requirements include several informal writing assignments, two short essays, one longer essay, a discussion assignment, a midterm examination, and a comprehensive final examination.

Course Texts (available at The Dusty Bookshelf, 700 N. Manhattan Ave, in Aggieville across the street from Varney's)

Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo (Vintage)
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Norton)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Perennial)
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun and the Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (Vintage)
Adah Isaacs Menken, Infelicia and Other Writings (Broadview)
Art Spiegelman, Maus, volumes 1 & 2 (Pantheon)
Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge (Penguin)
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fisfight in Heaven (Perennial)

Plus a small coursepack of readings available in the Eisenhower Hall copy center.