Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture

Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture by Sollors, Werner. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780195051933.

This highly original study examines the role of "ethnicity" in American literature and what that literature has said--and continues to say--about our remarkably diverse culture. Sollors focuses particularly on the conflict between "descent" and "consent"--between the concern for ones racial, ethnic, and familial heritage and the conflicting desire to choose ones own destiny regardless of that heritage. "Grave and hilarious, tender and merciless...The book performs a public service."--Quentin Anderson