This America: An Original Fiction Manuscript and Examination of the Failure of the Cornucopian Vision in Assimilative Immigrant Fiction

Abstract

The thesis, “This America: An Original Fiction Manuscript and Analysis of the Failure of the Cornucopian Vision in Assimilative Immigrant Fiction” is a manuscript of original short fiction foreworded by a critical preface. The critical preface contextualizes the struggles of Eastern European immigrants in their efforts to assimilate to a new country. In support of this contextualization, the preface addresses the failure of the cornucopian vision of America: the unsustainable image of abundance that has flattened, if not obliterated, the relationship between a people and their land. The result of such an investigation has been the rendering of our inherited metaphors for assimilation insufficient. The collection of stories that follows the critical preface draws upon fictional storytelling techniques and personal narrative to reshape those metaphors, to give voice to the experience of a group of first, second and third generation Jewish families located in a fictional Northside neighborhood of Chicago. The collection also confronts the personal trauma of military service and relates it to the rivalry between tribal and national loyalties, a rivalry that in many ways defines the immigrant experience.