Multilingual Literature of the United States

Abstract

Like the Russian Federation, the United States is a multilingual, multicultural society. A nation of immigrants and indigenous peoples, it has produced a rich body of literature in dozens of languages in addition to English that scholars have only in recent decades begun to pay attention to. Of particular note are texts in Spanish, Yiddish, Chinese, French, Hebrew, German, Arabic, Norwegian, Welsh, Greek, Turkish, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese and numerous American Indian languages. In this paper we observe the most significant texts of multilingual American literature. The corpus of literary works shows us, that despite Americans pervasive and enduring xenolinguaphobia - aversion to other languages - the United States, like other large countries, is a heterogeneous amalgam. Ignoring the variety of works written in languages other than English impoverishes the national culture and handicaps serious readers.