Color Me White

Naturalism/Naturalization in American Literature

by Mita Banerjee

Book cover: Color Me White

Extent: 496 pages

Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter

Subjects: Social Sciences 

Series: American Studies - A Monograph Series

Series volume number: 237

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(October 2013)

ISBN: 9783825362201

5.28 x 8.27 inches

Price: $75.00

In stock

This book explores a remarkable parallelism in American literary and legal histories: the parallel between naturalism and naturalization. At the turn of the twentieth century, with the influx of unprecedented waves of immigration, the judiciary is at a loss to define who is “white” and who is not. In the courts of law, “whiteness” becomes a performance of cultural assimilability rather than a biological fact. It is this same cultural code of whiteness, this book argues, around which the literature of naturalism revolves by engaging in naturalization debate of its own.


This book explores a remarkable parallelism in American literary and legal histories: the parallel between naturalism and naturalization. At the turn of the twentieth century, with the influx of unprecedented waves of immigration, the judiciary is at a loss to define who is “white” and who is not. In the courts of law, “whiteness” becomes a performance of cultural assimilability rather than a biological fact. It is this same cultural code of whiteness, this book argues, around which the literature of naturalism revolves by engaging in naturalization debate of its own.

  • By (author) Mita Banerjee