This course provides a survey of literature that addresses the concerns of minorities living in the United States, based on class, race, ethnicity, national identity, citizenship, religion, cultural heritage, gender identity, and sexual identity.
From the discrimination, prejudice, and violence experienced by many minoritized groups within American society come works of literature, poetry, nonfiction, and criticism that push back against the societal structures that attempt to subdue them, and celebrate and examine their identities and processes of identity construction.
Other useful guides by the SUNY Adirondack Librarians:
These reference databases offer overviews of your issue, and offers ideas to narrow your topic.
The ProQuest Central database searches millions of articles from newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals. Use it to fill in gaps in your research.
Doing research?
Check out these tutorial videos, many of which are narrated by our own Reference and Instruction Librarian, Joyce Miller!
Ready to cite your sources?
Visit the CRW (Center for Reading and Writing) and click Writer Resources for the MLA Citation Guide!
Terms/Keywords for research:
Multicultural; cross-cultural; post-colonial; diaspora; mestizaje; Chicanx; dualism; racism; xenophobia; civil rights; classism; cultural appropriation; immigration; prejudice; multiracial; race; identity; community; homophobia; sexuality; misogyny; misogynoir; ethnicity; Latinx; LGBTQIA+; religion; religious persecution; trauma; intergenerational trauma; assimilation; heritage; whiteness; Muslim; Islamophobia; stereotypes; stereotype threat; microaggression; authenticity; realness
Immigrant voices:
- Trailing clouds : immigrant fiction in contemporary America PS374.I48 C69 2006
- Special sorrows : the diasporic imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish immigrants in the United States JV6477 .J33 1995
Haitian and Caribbean post-colonial voices:
- Caribbean women writers and globalization : fictions of independence PR9205.05 S27 2006
- The Oxford book of Caribbean short stories PR9205.8 .O94 199
- (Poetry) Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair PS3619.I56847 A6 2016
African-American or Black voices:
- Jamaica Kincaid : a literary companion PR9275.A583 K5676 2008
- Middle passages and the healing place of history : migration and identity in Black women's literature PR9080.5 .M54 2006
- "The changing same" : black women's literature, criticism, and theory PS374.N4 M37 1995
Latinx-American, Mexican-American, or Hispanic voices:
- Herencia : the anthology of Hispanic literature of the United States PS508.H57 H48 2002
- Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature : Explorations of Place and Belonging PS153.H56 S63 2013
- Spiritual mestizaje : religion, gender, race, and nation in contemporary Chicana narrative PS153.M4 D454 2011
Asian-American, Japanese, Chinese, Korean etc. voices:
- The woman warrior : memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts CT275.K5764 A3 1989
- A gesture life PS3562.E3347 G4 1999
- Citizen 13660 D769.8.A6 O38 2014
