Roth, Morrison and Silko: Studies in survival

This dissertation discusses the work of three prominent contemporary novelists from very different ethnic backgrounds: Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth. The argument that I forward is that all three writers, whatever their differences, nevertheless deal with the stresses of their disparate traditions in markedly similar ways, in particular by focusing on their own character's desire to resist integration with mainstream America.;In their resistance to an assimiliation that would invalidate their ethnic identities, the Native American writer, the African-American writer, and the Jewish-American writer draw upon similar narrative strategies, themes and attitudes. All invoke alienation as a structure of power, all engage in a seemingly necessary demonization of the white or the gentile, and all rely upon ghost characters who offer a perhaps fleeting solution to "survivor's" guilt.;I realize that juxtaposing Roth, the male Jew, with Silko and Morrison may be startling, given the present outlines of American studies. But I also want to address the question of ghettoization not only in the creation of an "ethnic" literature but also, metacritically, in the way Roth has been left out of a dialogue that he in part helped to create. Without ignoring the areas of his work that have been stigmatized, (for example, the feminist critique of his sexism), I view his work, as well as that of Silko and Morrison, in the larger context of the long tradition of the survival narrative. To sharpen our sense of what these writers are reacting against, I also set their works against an equally long tradition of hate literature that seeks to write the Native American, the African American, and the Jew out of mainstream American literature and culture.