What does the modern era look like to those labeled “not modern” or “traditional”? Refuting claims that their art was “old world” and “primitive,” African, Native, and Jewish American writers
in the early twentieth century instead developed experimental strategies of self-representation that reshaped the very form of the novel itself. Uncovering the connections and confrontations
among three ethnic groups not often read in relation to one another, Kent maps out the historical contexts that have shaped ethnic American writing in the Modernist era, a period of radical
dislocation from homelands and increased migration for these three ethnic groups. Rather than focus on the ways others have represented these groups, Kent restores the voices of these
multicultural writers to the debate about what it means to be modern.
