The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature

The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the largest period of immigration in U.S. history. This immigration, however, was accompanied by legal segregation, racial exclusionism, and questions of residents’ national loyalty and commitment to a shared set of “American” beliefs and identity. The faulty premise that homogeneity—as the symbol of the “melting pot”—was the mark of a strong nation underlined nativist beliefs while undercutting the rich diversity of cultures and lifeways of t