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

5.31 x 8.31 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.

  • By (author) Mita Banerjee