Read together, novels from a contemporary world writer (Salman Rushdie) and two modern American authors (Faulkner and Ellision) depict a century-long transformation of how American identity and experience have been conceived and imagined; these changes are revealed in the fiction of encounters between immigrants and natives.

Scholar, critic and novelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of American Literature at Ryerson University in Toronto. He is the author of Governor of the Northern Province, a novel, and contributes literary and cultural criticism to a series of North American publications, including Harper's and The Walrus.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: Imagining Nation and Imaginary Americans

Chapter Two: Salman Rushdie's American Idyll

Chapter Three: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Immigrants

Chapter Four: William Faulkner's "Durn Furriners"

Chapter Five: Americans You'll Never (Have To) Be

Notes

Bibliography

Index