Literary Duality in America: Immigrants, Outsiders, Slaves - Smaranda Stefanovici

„America has been and continues to be a country of immigrants. Going to America means entering a vibrant melting-pot of cultures. Whether they went in the great waves of migration of past centuries, or more recently as economic migrants, or as refugees fleeing from wars and dictatorships, migrants are faced with the same questions of adaptation and survival.
The identity crisis that ensues may last years or a lifetime as cultural norms and ethnicity come into play, are questioned, and challenged. For women migrants, this existential crisis is also a gender crisis deepened by the tension between traditional and new gender roles and the impact of stereotypes.
The essays in this volume discuss, among other matters, the work of several female authors whose fictional short stories and novels heavily reflect their own experiences as immigrants in the USA. The essays bring to life the common story of immigrants’ struggling to adapt to the new reality in the new land and the questions of identity that arise in the process.
The author discusses notions of biculturalism, acculturation, enculturation, double consciousness, fragmented self, ambivalence, ambiguity and liminality as inner spaces inhabited by the various characters.
The six writers whose works are the object of the author’s keen and nuanced scrutiny are: B. Mukherjee, P. Marshall, J. S. Wong, H. Yamamoto, J. Lahiri and H. Jacobs.”
 
Smaranda Stefanovici