This important new collection of interdisciplinary essays sets out to chart the cultural construction of "ethnicity" as embodied in American ethnic literature. Looking at a diverse set of texts, the contributors place the subject in broad historical and dynamic contexts, focusing on the larger systems within which ethnic distinctions emerge and obtain recognition. It provides a new critical framework for understanding not only ethnic literature, but also the underlying psychological, historical, social, and cultural forces. Table of Contents: On the Fourth of July in Sitka, . Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity, . An American Writer, . A Plea for Fictional Histories and Old-Time "Jewesses", . Ethnicity as Festive Culture: Nineteenth-Century German-America on Parade, . Defining the Race, 1890-1930, . Anzia Yezierska and the Making of an Ethnic American Self, . Deviant Girls and Dissatisfied Women: A Sociologist's Tale, . Ethnic Trilogies: A Genealogical and Generational Poetics, . Blood in the Market Place: The Business of Family in the Narratives, . Comping for Count Basie, . Is Ethnicity Obsolete, and .