SOURCE: Furman, Andrew. “Immigrant Dreams and Civic Promises: (Con-)Testing Identity in Early Jewish American Literature and Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land.” MELUS 25, no. 1 (spring 2000): 209-26.

In the following essay, Furman compares fiction about the Jewish-American immigrant experience to that of the Chinese-American immigrant experience in Jen's Mona in the Promised Land. Furman asserts that Jen's writing “engages the paradigm shift regarding the immigrant ethos” that has developed in America since the 1960s.

One of the things about which he often made fun of me was my Talmud gesticulations, a habit that worried me like a physical defect. It was so un-American. I struggled hard against it.

—David Levinsky

Don't tell me we're just as good as anybody else, don't tell me we're Americans just like they are. No, no, these blond-haired Christians are the legitimate residents and owners of this place.

—Alexander Portnoy

American means...