Ethnic Modernism and the Making of US Literary Multiculturalism, 1st ed. 2016

Ethnic Modernism and the Making of US Multiculturalism in which ethnic literary modernists of the 1930s play a crucial role. Focusing on the remarkable careers of four ethnic fiction writers of the 1930s (Younghill Kang, D'Arcy McNickle, Zora Neale Hurston, and Américo Paredes) Sorensen presents a new view of the history of multicultural literature in the U.S. The first part of the book situates these authors within the modernist era to provide an alternative, multicultural vision of American modernism. The second part examines the complex reception histories of these authors' works, showing how they have been claimed or rejected as ancestors for contemporary multiethnic writing. Combining the approaches of the new modernist studies and ethnic studies, the book.

Introduction: Untimely Ancestors
PART I: CONSTRAINED EMERGENCE
1. Thwarted Desire
2. Stifled Voice
3. Failed Alternatives
4: Impossible Authorship
PART II: RECOVERING UNTIMELINESS
Interchapter: Desperately Seeking Untimeliness
5. Exploding the Hurston Boom
6. Recovering Negativity
7. The Threat of Un-Recovery
8. The Challenge of Non-Recovery
Conclusion: Multiculturalism's Unfinished Work