American Identities: Contemporary Multicultural Voices

Diverse expressions of the dynamic interaction between subculture and the American consciousness.

Contemporary commentators have observed that postmodern America is less a melting pot than a buffet table. In American Identities people of diverse ethnic, religious, social, gender, and sexual backgrounds "refuse to merge but insist on a multiplicity of well-maintained identities," the editors explain. This sixth volume in the popular Bread Loaf Anthology series gathers 39 voices whose poems, stories, and essays describe in occasionally stark, sometimes humorous, and often moving terms what it means to be black and American, gay and American, Latino and American, or Jewish and American within this society.