was reissued to include “ Bright and Morning Star ” and the autobiographical introduc-
tory essay “ The Ethics of Living Jim Crow. ” Though this collection, and to a greater
extent his now classic novel Native Son (1940) and autobiography Black Boy (1945),
mark Richard Wright as a quintessential proletariat and black protest writer of the
1940s, he was to come out with another powerful collection of stories in 1961, Eight
Men . Several of the stories are based on earlier publications, most notably “ The Man
Who Was Almost a Man, ” which has the same plot but a less mature protagonist
than his earlier prize - winning story. Because of the dedicated efforts of the African
American literary community, black writers were the strongest collective voice to
challenge American prejudice and complacency regarding racial and ethnic issues in
the period between the wars.
The concerns of the age were also refl ected in the tales from groups who were just
beginning to tell the tales of their communities. One of the most popular stories of
the day was the hard - hitting “ Christ in Concrete ” by Italian American writer Pietro
di Donato. The story, based on the death of his father at a construction site, was
expanded into a book of the same title that gained national attention in 1939. Another
writer to receive recognition was Jos é Garcia Villa. Though known primarily for his
poetry, two stories, “ Untitled Story ” and “ The Fence, ” were selected as Best American
Short Stories in 1932 and 1933. Villa was born in the Philippines, and after winning
a prize there for his writing, came to America, where he lived for over forty years,
though he never became an American citizen. The two narratives refl ect the transcul-
tural nature of the multiethnic short story tradition as the former, a modern story of
assimilation in an American academic setting, differs greatly from the latter tale set
in a village in the Philippines.
The decades following World War II were a time of rapid changes in American
society and the world marked by the growth of the middle class, the unprecedented
power of the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of feminism, the Vietnam War, and
the countercultural revolution it spawned. The catastrophic events of World War II,
and most signifi cantly the attempted genocide of Jews in Europe, led to a new inte-
riority in the American short story. In fact Jewish American authors dominated the
The Multiethnic Story
473
tradition during this period as writers, most notably Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud,
Philip Roth, Tillie Olsen, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Paley, and Cynthia Ozick,
published volumes of short stories that both question humanity and reaffi rm the
existence of Jews worldwide. The power and popularity of their work is evident in
the national and international recognition they received. Over their careers this group
has been selected as Best American Short Story and O. Henry Prize winners over two
dozen times. In 1959 The Magic Barrel by Malamud won the National Book Award,
as did Goodbye, Columbus by Roth the following year. Bellow was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1976. Singer won in 1978 – the only American to win who
wrote in a language other than English, and the only Yiddish writer ever to win.
Bellow, Malamud, Roth, and Singer began publishing short stories in the 1950s,
Olsen and Paley in the 1960s, and Ozick in the 1970s, and all continued to write for
decades. Throughout their careers they followed the consciousness of Jews in the
Diaspora. Singer, who emigrated from Poland to America as an adult, wrote most
often of the restrictions and values of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and of the immi-
gration experience. The others, all children of Russian immigrants (with the exception
of Roth, who was third - generation), expressed the complicated existence of Jews in
America negotiating the uneven assimilation process, the everyday tensions of families
where generations have had vastly different lives, and the profound ambivalence many
experienced living as Jews in America as millions died in the Holocaust overseas.
Tillie Olsen ’ s “ Tell Me a Riddle ” (1961) encompasses all these themes through the
stark internal struggles of an elderly Jewish couple in the days leading up to the wife ’ s
death. The riddle, the problem for these characters, is: how is it possible to reconcile
the idealism of youth and the persecution that results, the memory of poverty, the
tragedy of history, the distance that separates families, and the inescapable solitude
of existence with the undeniable presence of love, strength, and continuance? The
questioning by Jewish American writers of this period ranges from Saul Bellow ’ s
“ Looking for Mr. Green ” (1951), in which the protagonist asks, “ Why is the consent
given to misery? ” to Cynthia Ozick ’ s much anthologized “ The Shawl ” (1980) that
unblinkingly portrays the agonizing life and horrifying death of a baby in a concen-
tration camp under the inhumanity of the Nazis, which leaves the reader to ask the
eternal question, “ why? ”
As it had from its roots in the late nineteenth century, the tradition of African
American short story writing continued during this period to express the most pro-
found concerns of a rich and diverse culture. In 1971 Ann Petry became the fi rst
African American woman to publish a volume of short stories when her writings of
the previous three decades were collected in Miss Muriel and Other Stories . Early tales,
such as “ Like a Winding Sheet, ” fi rst published in The Crisis in 1945, refl ect the dual
pressures of racism and economic stress that refl ect the main concerns of ethnic Ameri-
can writers of the generation before. Going to Meet the Man (1965) by James Baldwin,
on the other hand, is a stunning offering that charts the contemporary intersections
of Southern black history and urban black life and the inheritances of culture and
history that both unite and divide the individual and community. Two stories from
474
Molly Crumpton Winter
this collection that thread African American musical traditions into complex stories
of love and regret are “ Sonny ’ s Blues ” and “ Going to Meet the Man. ” The former story
traces the relationship of two brothers and their shared and divergent knowledge of
suffering. As the story opens, the narrator, a high school math teacher, refl ects on
their lives through that of his students: “ These boys, now, were living as we ’ d been
living then, they were growing up in a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against
the low ceiling of their actual possibilities ” (104). The story navigates the darkness
of life that comes through personal sorrow as well as the oppression experienced as an
African American in a racist society. Reprieve from the darkness, however tenuous,
comes through family, forgiveness, and the cultural inheritance of music, in this case
the blues, that the younger brother helps his sibling understand. The music that
permeates “ Going to Meet the Man ” is the protest songs of the Civil Rights Move-
ment, which were based on the familiar spirituals of black Christian life. Jesse, the
main character in this story, is a white d
eputy sheriff in the South desperately cling-
ing to ingrained notions of racial superiority even as social change is chipping away
at Southern white apartheid. Through his depiction of a lynching Jesse witnesses as
a child, where he is bonded to his parents through bloodshed and racism, Baldwin
delineates the process of hate that is psychologically damaging to the oppressor as
well as the oppressed. Together, Baldwin ’ s collection gives witness to the injustice of
society even as it acknowledges the fragility and potential for good inherent in all
people.
Another particularly strong voice of the era was James Alan McPherson, whose
stories appeared in over two dozen periodicals. He also published two critically
claimed collections
Hue and Cry (1968) and Elbow Room
(1977)
, which won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1978. Through a wide - ranging diversity of characters,
from “ Old School ” waiters in railway dining cars ( “ A Solo Song: For Doc ” ), to an
aspiring writer and “ apprentice janitor ” ( “ Gold Coast ” ), to a cosmopolitan New
Yorker with South Carolina roots ( “ Why I Like Country Music ” ), to a young African
American couple in London ( “ I Am an American ” ), McPherson captures the cross -
sections of black American life as it is lived in a multicultural world.
A similar range of characters and settings is found in the works of Toni Cade
Bambara and Alice Walker, though their short story collections more specifi cally
refl ect the power of the black feminist perspective. In Bambara ’ s popular story “ The
Lesson ” from Gorilla, My Love (1972) , the tough and insightful young Sylvia is com-
pelled to face the reality that in the economic hierarchy of society she and her friends
are of the lower class, a revelation that she faces with the stern resolve that “ ain ’ t
nobody gonna beat me at nuthin ” (96). Walker captures the evolving sensibilities of
women in the 1970s in her two collections In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
(1973) and You Can ’ t Keep a Good Woman Down (1981) . “ The Abortion, ” which was
selected as an O. Henry Prize winner in 1981, records the complications of life for
women, particularly for a woman of color, in the this decade of change.
In the early 1970s, apparently inspired by Black Nationalist sentiments, Frank
Chin, Jeffery Chan, Lawson Inada, and Shawn Wong published the groundbreaking
The Multiethnic Story
475
Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian - American Writers (1974) . The editors included works
by Chinese American, Japanese American, and Filipino American writers and made
a case for a new literary tradition that is distinct from both mainstream America and
from the nations of ethnic origin. The text revitalized interest in writers who were in
danger of being forgotten, such as Toshio Mori, who wrote a collection of short stories
about Japanese American life set before World War II entitled Yokohama, California
(1949) , and Hisaye Yamamoto, who had been publishing short stories in Japanese
American periodicals and national literary journals for twenty fi ve years. Her stories,
which were fi nally collected in Seventeen Syllables in 1988 , trace Japanese American
life from prewar farming communities, through the World War II internment camp
experience, to the feminist movement of the 1970s.
The cultural revolutions of the 1970s gave rise to the development of ethnic studies
in universities across the United States. The new interest in the diverse histories and
cultures that make up the nation, along with an increasing number of ethnic Ameri-
cans and women entering into academia, led to the heated debates of the “ canon wars ”
in the 1980s. The power and quality of contemporary multiethnic writing, combined
with research and theory that resulted in recovery of countless early texts and new
ways of reading works from different ethnic literary traditions, proved the study of
multiethnic American literature to be a valuable and limitless discipline, and one that
is crucial in understanding our national makeup. The 1980s to the present has been
a time of amazing expansion for ethnic American short story writing. Not only are
there more stories being published, but also collections are broadening the limits of
genre, and stories and authors refl ect a growing variety of cultural origins.
Building on the promise of the generation before, Asian American short story
writers have achieved unparalleled success in the last twenty - fi ve years. The wide range
of ethnic origins of the authors refl ects changing immigration patterns and increased
globalization. Examples of Chinese American literature, for example, range from the
stories of second - generation writer Gish Jen in Who ’ s Irish? (1999) , whose Chinese
American characters have integrated into American society; to the stories of Ha Jin,
who immigrated as an adult to America and whose stories in The Bridegroom (2000)
are set in present - day China; to the international stories of British - born Peter Ho
Davies, of Welsh and Chinese background, whose tales in The Ugliest House in the
World (1997) are set primarily in the UK and Southeast Asia and feature British and
Chinese characters. Writers such as Gish Jen and David Wong Louie present the
perspective of American children of Chinese descent who are mostly at ease with their
assimilation but who still possess a keen awareness of critical moments when others
question their or their parents ’ belonging, as in Jen ’ s much - anthologized “ In the
American Society, ” when a Chinese American father triumphs over the bigotry of a
white Anglo - Saxon character, who in many ways represents the complacent assump-
tion of superiority of a certain American type that has changed little in the past
hundred years.
Japanese American short stories of this period also refl ect the generations of families
that have lived in America, and for many writers the internment experience of World
476
Molly Crumpton Winter
War II stands as a pivotal event in their histories and in the formation of their identi-
ties, as in the stories included in Desert Run: Poems and Stories (1988) by Mitsuye
Yamada. In Talking to the Dead (1992) , on the other hand, Sylvia Watanabe represents
not a single ethnic perspective but the Asian fusion of her home state Hawaii, where
Japanese Americans were not subjected to internment. Another Pacifi c Rim perspec-
tive comes from Mary Yukari Waters, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother
and Irish American father and who moved to America at age 9. All of her stories in
The Laws of Evening (2004) are set in Japan.
Another representative of the international nature of the American short story is
Arresting God in Kathmandu (2001) by Samrat Upadhyay. Though most of the stories
are set in Nepal, the presence of an American ex - wife in one story and the meeting
of Nepali lovers at a wedding in New Jersey in another reveal the globalized modern
world. In fact, the back and forth nature of much of contemporary Asian American
literature represents modern immigration realities where lives are lived not discon-
nected from the nation of origin, but in continual crossings fr
om one culture to
another. In Hunger (1998) , Lan Samantha Chang represents the perspective of both
Chinese immigrants and their children. Indian American writers Bharati Mukherjee,
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Jhumpa Lahiri move freely between India and
America in their short story collections. Southeast Asian American short stories have
been selected two dozen times as Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize
winners, and Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction in 2000 – evidence that a strong new tradition is developing in American
literature. The back and forth nature of most contemporary Asian American short
stories refl ects the personal and national histories that people bring with them to the
United States, the special concerns of disparate groups when they arrive, and the
borderless experiences of the life of the mind and the heart with which each human,
regardless of background, must privately wrestle.
Short stories by Native American writers have also garnered national attention in
the past couple of decades as two artists, Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich, have
had several books become best - sellers. Alexie ’ s fi rst collection, The Lone Ranger and
Tonto Fistfi ght in Heaven
(1993)
, carefully balances hope and despair, humor and
pathos, as it depicts the lives of contemporary Spokane/Coeur d ’ Alene Indians on the
reservation and in relation to contemporary American life. Each story ends in a fragile
moment, teetering on the brink of history, failure, forgiveness, and redemption. The
presence of love, music, memory, and traditions promises continuance, though, as
Junior says at the end of “ A Good Story, ” “ there is just barely enough goodness in all
of this ” (144). Alexie maintains this balance as he follows Native American characters
into the city, college, interracial relationships, and in conditions from homelessness
to professional life, in his next two collections The Toughest Indian in the World (2000)
and Ten Little Indians (2003) . Erdrich ’ s stories reach farther back into the historical
past as she traces the lives of Ojibwa characters on one reservation and their neighbors
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 102