SOURCE: TuSmith, Bonnie. “The Significance of the ‘Multi’ in ‘Multiethnic Literatures of the U.S.’” MELUS 26, no. 2 (summer 2002): 5-14.

In the following essay, derived from a lecture delivered at the 2001 MELUS Conference, TuSmith challenges teachers to deal directly and frankly with the issue of race and racial identity in teaching multicultural texts.

“She starts up the stairs to bed. ‘Don't get me up with the rest in the morning.’ ‘But I thought you were having midterms.’ ‘Oh, those,’ she comes back in, kisses me, and says quite lightly, ‘in a couple of years when we'll all be atom-dead they won't matter a bit.’” Some of you will no doubt recognize this passage from Tillie Olsen's often-anthologized mother-daughter story, “I Stand Here Ironing.” Well, half a century after the publication of the daughter Emily's glum prediction, we're still here. In a way, studying, reading, and writing imaginative literature implicates...