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A vexed figure inhabits U.S. literature and culture: the visibly racialized immigrant who disavows minority identity and embraces the American dream. Such figures are potent and controversial, for they promise to expiate racial violence and perpetuate an exceptionalist ideal of America. Swati Rana grapples with these figures, building on studies of literary character and racial form. Rana offers a new way to view characterization through racialization that creates a fuller social reading of race. Situated in a nascent period of ethnic identification from 1900 to 1960, this book focuses on immigrant writers who do not fit neatly into a resistance-based model of ethnic literature. Writings by Paule Marshall, Ameen Rihani, Dalip Singh Saund, Jose Garcia Villa, and Jose Antonio Villarreal symbolize different aspects of the American dream, from individualism to imperialism, assimilation to upward mobility. The dynamics of characterization are also those of contestation, Rana argues. Analyzing the interrelation of persona and personhood, Race Characters presents an original method of comparison, revealing how the protagonist of the American dream is socially constrained and structurally driven.
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Keywords
- 1900 to 1960
- African American
- afro-caribbean
- American character
- American Dream
- American exceptionalism
- Arab American
- archétype
- Asian American
- assimilation
- authorial character
- Autobiographical fiction
- Autobiography
- Black
- burden of representation
- Character
- character criticism
- Chicana/o
- Chicano
- Comparative
- comparative ethnic literature
- diaspora
- early twentieth-century immigrant literature
- ethnic literature
- Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies
- ethnic studies
- Ethnicity
- fictive character
- Filipina/o
- Immigration
- Individualism
- literary character
- literary formalism
- literary method
- Literature & literary studies
- Literature: history & criticism
- Marshall, Paule
- Migration, immigration & emigration
- model minority
- personhood
- Race
- racial form
- Rihani, Ameen
- Saund, Dalip Singh
- social character
- Social groups
- Social issues & processes
- Society & culture: general
- Society & Social Sciences
- South Asian
- upward mobility
- Villa, José Garcia
- Villarreal, José Antonio
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