Multicultural_Literature__A_Slow_Walk_Into_The_Canon

Multicultural Literature: A Slow Walk Into The Canon Multicultural Literature: A Slow Walk Into the Canon When deciding what works of literature should be included in an anthology designed for non-U.S. readers, we must first decide what is considered essential to U.S. literature. Without a question, the great writers of the past would be included, those considered canonical, but there is also another aspect to U.S. literature that is often excluded. Multicultural literature is very much a part of U.S. literature and should be included in any anthology celebrating the literature of the United States. One may ask why the incorporation of multicultural literature is important and what relevance it has to U.S. literature. Let us first look at the word multicultural; which must be broken into the word “multi” and the word “culture”. Culture, as defined by the New Riverside Dictionary, is a particular form of civilization, especially the beliefs, customs, arts, and institutions of a society at a given time. Based upon this definition, there are an infinite number of “cultures” in the United States that are characterized by numerous things such as age, race, region, religion, and so forth. There are many “cultures” within any one given culture and literature, multicultural, cultures, must, morrison, writes, one, should, look, included, essay, about, words, word, readers, number, culture, anthology, african, seems, morrison’s, given, black, because, writing, work, without, walk, united, trees, things, states, slow, reading, race