A Literary History of the American West

SECTION I

Earth Tones:

Ethnic Expression in Western American Literature

Introduction

YEARS OF FORMULAIC NOVELS and class B movies created an illusion– widely held until the recent past–that the historic American West was a lily-white enclave, pale-faced sheriffs throttling slightly darker villains and winning the hands of fair-skinned maidens. In fact, from the tribal cultures that preceded Europeans to America, through the explorers and settlers upon whom our mythos was built, to the varying individuals still streaming onto and across this continent, the West was and remains not only multiethnic, but possibly the most socially and culturally heterogeneous region in the United States.

Blacks, for example, accompanied Columbus and served with Cortez, so it is not surprising to find among the earliest "European" explorers of the West the names of Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, credited with founding Chicago, and Esteban (Stephen Dorantes), who early covered much of the Southwest. By the period of the cattle kingdom, Philip Durham and Everett Jones have shown, "more than five thousand Negroes played a part and did a job."

Afro-Americans were not unique in having contributed to the opening of the West, nor were non-whites the only "ethnics" in the region. To the extent that a group was or is hyphenated in the popular view-identified with its place of origin–whether by appearance, society, or language, it becomes in effect a culture within a culture. One of the most sensitive treatments of this enduring American phenomenon came from Colorado's Carey McWilliams, whose Brothers Under the Skin (1964, rev. ed.) remains a classic text. Paul Horgan's The Heroic Triad (1970) is another important demonstration of western multi-ethnicity, although it treats only the Southwest.

Today the illusion of the West as a European-American outpost, an idea that grew a century or more ago from the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, may still be found in the work of even highly respected authors. Joan Didion, for example, has written that her hometown, Sacramento

. . . is California, and California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried, ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.

Who runs out? Westward-moving Europeans, perhaps, but not Asian-Americans; for them the West is not the continent's end, but, paradoxically, a verdant eastern opening full of new possibilities. And Asians have contributed mightily to America's West, physically constructing much of it as they have culturally enriched it. Frank Chin in his play The Chickencoop Chinaman (1972), confronting the unjust reality that has allowed even recent European immigrants to call multi-generational Americans "Chinamen," writes:

". . .The strong Chinese family . . . Chinese culture." . . . The reason there was no juvenile delinquency was because there was no kids! The laws didn't let our women in . . . and our women born here lost citizenship if they married a man from China. And all our men here, no women, stranded here burned all their diaries, their letters, everything with their names on it . . . threw the ashes into the sea . . . hoping that much of themselves could find someplace friendly.

Clearly, being born in America has not been enough to make one American in the eyes of many people, and that grim paradox is the foundation of much writing by non-whites in the West. Literature, especially contemporary literature, has tended to be brutally frank in its revelation of injustice. Whether it is Lawson Fusao Inada's Before the War (1971), Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry (1929), or Vine Deloria's Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), the lingering question remains, "How long must this be tolerated?"

Even the terms used to symbolize ethnic groups in America can contribute to problems, since many designations remain controversial and less than consistent. Some, for example, are national: Armenian-American; others are continental: Asian-American; one is religious: Jewish-American; another is chimerical because it hides complexities of racial blending by emphasizing one component: Black American. Within each group, struggles over race, politics and social class may also be reflected: Chicano, Hispanic, Hispanoamerican, Spanish-American, Latino, Latin-American, American-Mexican, Mexican-American, etc. The terms employed in this section are traditional and are not used to make implicit judgments but to offer relatively clear distinctions between groups. It would be naive indeed, however, not to acknowledge the part language has played in racism–Nigger, Greaser, Spic, Wop, Kike, Chink, Slope–and its centrality to that lingering, bitterly ironic question: How long?

The group generally called "American Indians" has asked that question with special poignance. There were, of course, really no Indians; rather, the land was inhabited by Cherokees and Cheyennes, by Pomos and Mojaves, cultures as diverse as the Europeans who overwhelmed them. They were literary people all, employing sacred, oral literature in every aspect of their lives. Song–oral poetry–A. Grove Day pointed out in The Sky Clears (1968, rev. ed.) "was a way of tapping . . . superhuman force, and was used to obtain success in almost every act of Indian life." The sacred interdependence they felt with nature was revealed in chants such as the following from the Yokuts:

. . . My words are tied in one
with the great mountains,
with the great rocks,
with the great trees,
in one with my body
and my heart . . .
And you, day,
and you, night!
All of you see me
one with the world.

Oral tales were often used to educate youngsters, validating existence by providing mythic explanations for existing reality. They were used, too, as Jarold Ramsey points out in Coyote Was Going There (1977), "as a chief source of the continuity of. . . culture." Such tales were not only ritualized, they were also frequently humorous, revealing the universal human concern of their tellers. All understanding of Native American literature must begin with an examination of its oral roots.

Long before eloquent Indian writers developed, white writers found potent material, usually tragic, in the destruction of native cultures; as a result, no other western ethnic group has been so much written about. From Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (1884), through Laughing Boy (1929) by Oliver LaFarge, to the more recent and controversial Hanto Yo (1979) by Ruth Beebe Hill, the list is long and in places distinguished. The Man Who Killed the Deer (1942) by Frank Waters, Jack Schaefer's The Canyon (1952), and Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds (1962) have been especially and deservedly praised.

Among distinguished writers from various native cultures, Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) was the first: Indian Boyhood (1902) remains his most popular book. John Joseph Mathews in Wah'Kon-Tah (1932) revealed candidly conditions in which Indians were forced to live:

    "Ho, big inspector, you have come to bring us beef, I believe . . . You have sent us horns, bones, and hide of this beef, maybe now you have come to bring meat." He turned with a quick movement and left the store.
    The inspector turned to the trader and asked, "What did he say?"
    "He said you had sent the horns, bones and hide of the issue beef; when were you going to send the meat."
    The inspector laughed unnaturally . . . (p. 49)

Four years later D'Arcy McNickle produced another early high point in Indian writing with The Surrounded, offering one more unromantic revelation of how it feels to lose a continent. Not until the recent past have major novels by Indians been acknowledged. N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968) and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1977), for example, have been much admired. Not all critical praise has been so well earned, however, for many reviewers are apparently only now discovering the wonders of Indian literary expression and, with overcompensatory zeal, are praising anything published by a Native American author, practicing a kind of reverse discrimination.

In any case, Indians have few peers as singers of poetry, so it is not surprising that much of their finest literature has been poetic. Momaday and Silko, for example, are accomplished poets, as are James Welch, Simon Ortiz, Ray Young Bear, William Oandasan, Alonzo Lopez, Norman Russell, Peter Blue Cloud, Tom Greasybear, and Harold Littlebird; the list is long and growing as more and more talented younger poets are published in journals such as Blue Cloud Quarterly, A Magazine, and South Dakota Review. Typical is Anita Endrezze, who penned the following sensuous lines in "Learning the Spells: A Diptych":

Her nails flint a red-starred sky.
Her skin is rain on wet clay.
I root into that dark earth
like the snout of a white-eyed pig.

Many books by and about Native Americans skirt the edges of poetry in both their language and their subjects, for traditionally verse was reserved for sacred topics. Volumes such as John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1932) force an expansion of traditional literary categories to include a reality that is mythic as well as empirical. Also falling into this range are the books of Carlos Castaneda, which link Indian and Chicano sensibilities. Increasingly being viewed as fiction of a particularly imaginative sort, Castaneda's Don Juan series (The Teachings of Don Juan, 1971, et al.) reflects the strong Indian influence within what José Vasconcellos called "La Raza Cosmica," the cosmically blended race.

Like Indian literature, Mexican-American writing emanates from a rich oral tradition; folklore has been and is of great importance. The two most distinguished novels written to date by Chicanos, Tomás Rivera's ". . . y no se lo tragó la tierra" (1971) and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima (1972), both of which are very good indeed, cannot be fully understood without reference to the oral literature that remains a base of cultural identity. From the tales of la llorona, through the corridos from the southwest border, to such contemporary forms as the actos (dramatic sketches) by Luis Valdez, public and private expressions have mingled to produce uniquely Chicano art forms. Rivera has described Chicano literature as "a fiesta of the living."

Perhaps the major reason for the importance of folk expression is that Chicanos, unlike any other ethnic group, are a constantly expanding people with first-generation migrants from across the border daily reinforcing traditional values. A negative product of such cultural intimacy is an inability to distinguish between folk expression and crafted art that has led some Chicano nationalists to criticize such works as Richard Vasquez's novel Chicano (1969) or Valdez's play Zoot Suit (1978) because they appeal to too wide an audience.

Raymund Paredes has pointed out that "the Chicano experience is essentially cultural rather than racial," and the core of that culture is the Spanish language. Many of the finest Chicano writers prefer to employ the language of Mexico. Rolando Hinojosa (Estampas del valle otras obras, 1973), Miguel Méndez (Peregrinas de Aztlán, 1974), and Rivera have been the most accomplished American writers in Spanish to date. Carlota Cárdenas de Dwyer has shown that such work is, predictably, more Mexican, while work written in English (Vasquez, John Rechy, José Antonio Villarreal, among others) shows greater accommodation with Anglo values.

More commonly, though, Chicano writers have employed a stimulating mixture of English and Spanish–quite similar to the language spoken in barrios–in their work. Prose writers such as Mario Suárez and Anaya, as well as a battery of exciting contemporary poets, have forged new linguistic limits; José Montoya, for example, has written in "La Jefita":

Reluctant awakenings a la media
Noche y la luz prendida
PRRRRRRINNNNNGGGGGG!
A noisy chorro missing the basin.

Poetry by Chicanos has been especially strong, and a list of gifted poets would be impractically long here. A reading of Tomas Ybarra-Frausto's "The Chicano Movement and the Emergence of a Chicano Poetic Con-sciousness" (New Scholar 6 [1977]) will provide perspective. Two memorable poets must, however, be mentioned: Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, whose unpolished yet powerful epic poem, "Yo Soy Joaquin," stands as an early landmark of modern Chicano writing, and Gary Soto, whose finely crafted verse (see The Elements of San ]oaquin, 1977) has earned him recognition as among America's finest.

Like Chicanos, Asian-Americans are diverse. Three major groups have contributed significantly to our national literature: Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos. During the 1850s, Chinese from the southern provinces arrived in some numbers on the West Coast. A generation later, Japanese– most from either Hiroshima or Hawaii–began their influx. Filipinos in large numbers entered the West's migrant labor force about the time Mexicans did, following World War I.

Of the three, Japanese-Americans, the only group that was not essentially all-male, produced literature right away. The poetry and essays of Yone Noguchi, the haiku of Sheishi Tsunieshi, and the eclectic output of Sadakichi Hartmann had all emerged by the turn of the century. What also emerged at about that time was W. R. Hearst's powerful "Yellow Peril" campaign of systematic racism that finally bore its most bitter fruit with Executive Order 9066 and the internment of American citizens during World War II, an event that writers have not forgotten. Three of the most moving books dealing with Asian-American experiences–Mine Okubo's poignant Citizen 13660 (1946), JohnOkada's uncompromising No-No Boy (1957), and James and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's eloquent Farewell to Manzanar (1973)–deal with the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans.

Today, with younger, more radical writers beginning to dominate Asian-American expression, a different view of America is being offered. The new perspective is most clearly expressed in Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers (1974), which disdains much earlier writing, attacking especially assimilation and stereotyping. Write the editors, "what America published was, with rare exception, not only offensive to Chinese and Japanese America, but was actively inoffensive to white sensibilities."

In any case, when in the not-too-distant past large numbers of ChineseAmerican writers emerged, a surprisingly high percentage of them were women, and they evidenced no such anti-assimilationist attitude. Virginia Lee (The House That Tai Ming Built, 1963), Betty Lee Sung (Mountain of Gold, 1967), and Jade Snow Wong (Fifth Chinese Daughter, 1950) all produced widely read books, often fictionalized biographies, as did Pardee Lowe (Father and Glorious Descendant, 1943) and Louis Chu (Eat a Bowl of Tea, 1961). The first true novel by a Chinese-American was Diane Chan's The Frontiers of Love (1956). Contrasting with older styles is the brilliant contemporary voice of Maxine Hong Kingston (Woman Warrior, 1976; China Men, 1980), as well as Shawn Wong (Home Base, 1979) and playwright Chin, who has explained, "I don't want to be measured against the stereotype anymore."

The generations of Japanese-American writers seem somewhat less divided, possibly because their forced internment quietly radicalized artistic sensibilities. As a result, even the work of such early writers as poet Toyo Suyemoto and short story writers Hisaye Yamamoto and Toshio Mori continues to be admired. As pointed out earlier, literature and literary societies have been vital to Japanese-American culture from its beginnings, so spokespersons have continually developed. John Okada's perspective–"Pretty soon it'll be just like it was before the war. A bunch of Japs with a fence around them, not the kind you can see, but it'll hurt just the same"– was little different from that of such contemporary authors as playwright Momoko Ito and poet Lawson Inada. Counterpointing such work is the more assimilationist tone of books like Daniel Okamoto's American in Disguise (1971) and Bill Hosokawa's Nisei: The Quiet Americans (1969).

Filipino-American writing burgeoned early with the books of Carlos Bulosan (especially America Is in the Heart, 1946), the stories of Bienvenido Santos, and the poetry of José García Villa. Recently, however, little work by Filipino-American artists has found print, although a small renaissance featuring Al Robles, Oscar Peñaranda, and Sam Tagatac seems to be developing. The editors of Aiiieeeee! explain: "The Filipino-American writer's slow emergence in the American literary scene has been stifled mainly by the fact that it is only now that the Filipino writer is beginning to recognize his Filipino-American experience."

Afro-Americans, while they have contributed significantly to western history, have not yet produced much regional literature. The best known black western writer has been that exceptional Texas folklorist J. Mason Brewer (The Word on the Brazos, 1953; Worser Days and Better Times, 1965; etc.). "If we do not respect the past," he wrote in 1963, "the future will not respect us." Brewer did indeed respect the past and give it life for his readers. Two earlier westerners, Sutton E. Griggs and Oscar Micheaux, had paved the way for Brewer, and one of his contemporaries, Wallace Thurman, a product of Salt Lake City, wrote in 1929 a strong novel of a Negro's move from West to East, The Blacker the Berry, that also revealed intraracial prejudice. Oklahoma's Ralph Ellison is generally conceded to have produced a major American novel in Invisible Man (1952), and a white Texan, John Howard Griffin, produced in Black Like Me (1961) one of the most remarkable volumes dealing with America's racial relations. Among younger authors, the poetry of Eugene Redmond, Wanda Coleman, and Sherley Anne Williams, the plays of Ed Bullins, and the fiction of Ishmael Reed, Al Young, and Ernest Gaines, Californians all, have received considerable praise.

Of course, not all "ethnics" in the West have been non-white. In the Midwest, for example, the Norwegian-language writing of O. E. Rølvaag, especially Giants in the Earth (1927), is considered a great contribution to both Norwegian and American cultures. Armenian-Americans, who number only about half a million, and whose large-scale immigration didn't begin until after World War I, have probably produced more high-quality writing per capita than any other group. Indeed, if only William Saroyan had emerged from Armenian America, the U.S.A. would have been well served indeed, especially by such works as My Name Is Aram (1939) and The Time of Your Life (1941). Saroyan's rich literary output has been supplemented by the work of Khatchik Minasian (The Simple Songs of Khatchik Minasian, 1950), Leon Surmelian (98.6, 1950), David Kherdian and James Baloian (editors of Down at the Santa Fe Depot, 1970), George Mardikian (Song of America, 1956), plus the short stories of Katherine Manoogian, the poetry of Mary Matosian Morabito, Aram Saroyan, and James Magorian. William Saroyan, nonetheless, remains the dominant figure.

Another European immigrant group, the Basques, have contributed considerably to the West's sheep industry, and their singular experiences seem to make them perfect literary material. Basques made their first significant appearance in the West during the California gold rush, and by the turn of the century they had become prominent not only in that state but in other areas of the ranching West. Despite their use as characters by nonBasque writers in America, Richard Etulain has pointed out that "the Euskadunak remain immigrants in search of a literary interpreter." The nonBasques who have used them as characters in western writing have often employed negative stereotypes. Only one Basque-American writer has established himself to date, Robert Laxalt, whose Sweet Promised Land (1957) and In a Hundred Graves: A Basque Portrait (1972) offer a solid foundation for future Basque-American writers. Another interesting volume, Louis Irigaray and Theodore Taylor's A Shepherd Watches, a Shepherd Sings (1975) provides further evidence of the wealth of literary material awaiting expression.

The development of literary traditions within various ethnic groups in the American West has followed a general pattern. In its earliest stages, literature is oral and employs the native tongue rather than English. This folkloric stage tends to be candid, discussing exactly what concerns members of the group, albeit with some artistic circumspection and often great charm. The corridos of the Southwest are prime examples of this early development.

Eventually written literature in the native language–most often the product of periodicals and presses specializing in the old tongue–begins to supplement oral forms, although it rarely replaces them totally. O. E. Rølvaag's Giants in the Earth is a high point of "foreign language" western American literature.

As migrants become more comfortable with their adopted land and its language, especially as their progeny are educated in an English-language school system, more and more literature written in English appears; often the three literatures (native oral, native written, and English written) exist side by side, and reflect differences between generations as well as degrees of assimilation. Typically, as this initial English-language stage develops, writers are less frank than they might have been using the language of the old country; much of such literature deals with genteel or noble figures victimized by the intolerance of the host society, but refusing to become embittered. Daisuko Kitagawa's Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (1967) or Oscar Micheaux's The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913) exemplify this stage.

The pattern has varied beyond that point depending upon a group's specific experiences. If a group has been victimized by continued racism as Asian-Americans have been, it might produce revolutionary literature demanding justice and liberation or graphically tracing the effects of discrimi-nation. One unquestioned effect of racism is to make a group continually aware of its ethnicity, so a strong sense of what might be called Asian-Americanness, through a glass darkly, is found for example in Aiiieeeee! : An Anthology of Asian American Writers, which epitomizes narrowly ethnic responses. Jeanne and James Houston's Farewell to Manzanar, on the other hand, exposes the results of racism without the angry tone of Aiiieeeee! and has been more widely read by a general audience, thus arguably producing the greater impact. Both books are, of course, written in English for an English-reading audience.

At the other extreme, a group, especially a white group, may simply blend into the dominant majority after a generation or two, retaining exactly as much ethnic awareness as it chooses. Scandinavian-Americans have managed this process and produced fine literature in the bargain. But even they–like all other groups to varying degrees–undergo a cultural crisis; at some point their literature, like their lives, becomes more American than Scandinavian, and a sense of betrayal develops. Writes Christer Mossberg: "Major novelists, such as Simon Johnson, Ole Rølvaag, and Sophus Winther wrote when the Scandinavian group as a generative subculture was disintegrating: perhaps this cultural crisis explains the special intensity underlying their fiction." The same generalization might be applied to William Saroyan and the Armenian-American culture that produced him or to Italian-American John Fante, who produced memorable novels set both in his native Colorado and in Los Angeles.

While their situation is indeed special, a particularly stimulating example of this kind of cultural crisis may be found in the writing of Mexican-Americans. Unlike other ethnic groups in the West, many Chicanos aren't migrants; but there is also, as noted previously, a large migrant group continuing their move into what were once the northern reaches of Mexico; there is also the reality of the growth of functional bilingualism throughout the Southwest. All these factors contribute to a unique literature being produced by Chicanos, and the pattern of their writing exemplifies all the stages listed above, plus a significant response to the cultural crisis Mossberg discusses.

Chicano writers have produced and are producing work in English (Pocho by José Antonio Villarreal), in Spanish and English as separate texts (". . . y no se lo tragó la tierra" by Tomás Rivera), in a blend of both languages (Bernabe by Luis Valdez) and in Spanish (Peregrinas de Aztlán by Miguel Méndez), reflecting rich variations of assimilation and cultural nationalism. Because of their unique situation, Mexican-American authors need not accept total assimilation or total nationalism as their only alternatives; they are increasingly able to shape the culture they enter, and that fact makes their art perhaps the most promising now being produced west of the Mississippi.

Etulain has noted that, in general, "before the Second World War, groups such as Blacks, Chicanos, Indians, and Orientals were not treated sympathetically in western American literature." As characters, they have tended to be negatively stereotyped by white writers, though an occasional noble savage was tolerated. More recently, white writers have produced complex non-white characters. Nonwhite writers, while they were few in the early days, nonetheless offered a different view both of their own group and of the West generally.

Etulain's generalization, with some reservations, might also be applied to "white ethnics" in the West, for they too were often victimized by stereotypes, though rarely as brutally or as persistently as non-whites. It is also true, as already noted, that due to appearance it had been much easier for whites to slip unnoticed into the mainstream if they wished.

In any case, social realities in America since World War II have led toward more accurate, more humane presentations of all ethnic groups in western writing. Despite the spectre of overcompensation that always hovers near revisionist expression, a more candid view of who did what in the West's development has emerged, moving perceptions away from the fabled West that never was, and offering artists an even richer literary potential.

Most importantly, "ethnics" are no longer merely being written about. The single most important product of new perspectives has been the emergence of significant numbers of gifted, committed authors capable of ignoring stereotypes and projecting their cultural identities and personal realities on the West's dynamic stage.

GERALD W. HASLAM, Sonoma State University

Selected Bibliography
Ararat. Winter 1977. See special section on Armenian-American writing, featuring articles by Nona Balakian, Ara Baliozian, Souren Manuelian, and Harold Bond. Chang, C. J. "Chinese and Literature." East/West (part 1, March 18, 1970; part 2, March 25, 1970; part 3, April 1, 1970). Examines images of chinese-Americans in literature written by and about them.
Chin, Frank. "Chinamen, Chinks and the CACA." East/West (part 1, Feb. 11, 1970; part 2, Feb. 18, 1970). Suggests that Chinese-Americans are different from Chinese and from Americans, and that literature can reflect such uniqueness.
Day, A. Grove. The Sky Clears. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968. Pioneering study of American Indian poetry, it remains among the finest and most thorough.
Durham, Philip, and Everett Jones. The Negro Cowboys. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965. The first major study of blacks in the West. Valuable resource. Etulain, Richard. "The Basques in Western American Literature." In Anglo-American Contributions to Basque Studies: Essays in Honor of Jon Bilbao, edited by William A. Douglass, Richard W. Etulain, and William H. Jacobden, Jr. Reno: Desert Research Institute Publications on the Social Sciences, 1977. Most complete survey of Basques in western American writing now available.
Han, Hsiao-Min. Roots and Buds: The Literature of Chinese Americans. Ph.D. disser-tation (unpublished), Brigham Young University, 1980. A thorough survey of images of Chinese-Americans as reflected in literature produced by writers sharing that heritage.
Hancock, Joel. "The Emergence of Chicano Poetry." Arizona Quarterly 29 (1973). A good general survey of Chicano poetry to date.
Haslam, Gerald. "The Light That Fills the World: Native American Literature." South Dakota Review 11 (Spring 1973). An introduction to both oral and written literature by Native Americans.
. "Literature of the People: Native American Voices." CLA Journal 15 (December 1971). Examines the range of literary expression by American Indians.
. "The Other Literary West." Arizona Quarterly 38 (Autumn 1982). Explores "ethnic" writing by westerners, offering some generalized observations about the nature of such art.
. "Por la Causa: Mexican-American Literature." College English (May 1970). First major scholarly article to examine Chicano writing and offer insights into its special qualities.
Katz, William Loren. The Black West. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1973. A documentary and pictorial history that includes a number of literary figures plus a section on black western presses.
Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Does exactly what the title promises, provides a sense of social forces operative in Asian-American writing.
MELUS. Journal of the Society for the Study of the MultiEthnic Literature of the United States, consistently the finest publication in the field, this despite a tendency to become bogged in trendy political disputes. Highly recommended.
Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldura, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, Massachusetts: Persephone Press, 1981. Includes selections by a number of non-white western women.
Mossberg, Christer Lennart. Scandinavian Immigrant Literature. Boise: Boise State University, 1981. Finest survey of this important literary group, and offers strong evidence that "ethnic" expression is not merely a non-white phenomenon.
Paredes, Raymund. "Exclusion and Invisibility: Chicano Literature Not in Textbooks." Arizona English Bulletin 17 (1975). Surveys oral and folk literatures, as well as their progeny.
. "The Promise of Chicano Literature."In Minority Language and Literature, edited by Dexter Fisher. New York: Modern Language Association, 1977. An interesting study of the direction of modern Chicano writing.
Rivera, Tomás. "Chicano Literature: Festival of the Living." Books Abroad
49 (1975). A noted novelist offers an insider's view of Mexican-American literature.
Tachiki, Amy, et al. Roots: An Asian American Reader. Los Angeles: U.C.L.A. Asian American Studies Center, 1971. Invaluable resource book touching all major Asian immigrant groups to date.
Wu, William R. The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850–1940. Hamden, Connecticut: The Shoe String Press, 1982. Readable and comprehensive, this book surveys some 130 novels and stories in which Chinese characters appear.
Ybarra-Frausto, Tomás "TheChicano Movement and the Emergence of a Chicano Poetic Consciousness."New Scholar 6 (1977). Another good general survey, this one stressing what is unique in poetry by Chicanos.

[Contents] [Index]