Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text (Essays of the English Institute)
by Hortense J. Spillers

What constitutes the pervasive cultural assumptions known to us as "America?" Since the American hemisphere actually encompasses a variety of national identities, can it make sense to speak of a unified "American" identity? Can a place for marginalized identities be established within the cultural mainstream? Comparative American Identities maps out a dynamic terrain of "New World" cultural identities, questions and problems. The essays attempt to locate "America" as a cultural and historical site of plurality and division, a discursive space of multiple differences which becomes, paradoxically, the ground for a new notion of American unity.