Sex and reproduction in contemporary ethnic literature (E. L. Doctorow, Joy Kogawa, Oscar Hijuelos, Alice Walker)

This is a thematic cross-cultural study of contemporary ethnic literatures in America. It looks at sex and reproduction—both figurative and literal—in four contemporary ethnic novels to see what sex and reproduction do, how they work, and whether or not they function in a similar manner across groupings of ethnicity and gender. In order to answer these questions, I analyze four contemporary American ethnic novels for which instances of sex and reproduction are central: two written by men, two written by women, and each from a different ethnic group. These texts purposely cut across received groupings to provide the possibility of cross-cultural and gender-neutral conclusions about how sex and reproduction work in this literature.; The novels under study are The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow, Obasan by Joy Kogawa, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos, and The Color Purple , by Alice Walker. In reading these novels for sex and reproduction, I find that their function cannot be tied to the ethnicity of their author as much as to their narrative strategy and their gender. In each case, sex and reproduction engage the issue of difference in the construction of identity. The first two novels are testimonials of ethnic trauma. Sex and reproduction in these novels work to register the disruption of the ethnic community. The last two novels are ethnic fantasies that overcome the opposition between ethnic loyalty and escape. Sex and reproduction in these novels do not merely register ethnic trauma, they transform and resolve it. I also find that those texts written by men use instances of sex and reproduction to explore the problem of reproducing patriarchal ethnic culture in a hostile environment, but those by women use sex and reproduction to challenge oppressive discourses of ethnic and gender difference.; This finding that sex and reproduction is a thematic that novels of different ethnicities share is important because it advances a comparative approach in ethnic literary study that complements the current trend in ethnic literature and criticism that studies ethnic groups separately.