SOURCE: “The Price of Diversity: An Ambivalent Minority Report on the American Literary Canon,” in College Literature, Vol. 18, No. 3, October, 1991, pp. 15-29.

In the following essay, Parker recounts his own attempts to enlarge and expand the American literature canon to include more nontraditional works, but cautions that mainstream authors should continue to play an important role in the education of students.

This is a version of the talk I gave at the 1990 Chicago MLA for the American Literature Section session organized by James Justus on anthologizing American literature. I spoke as the editor of the 1820-65 section of the Norton Anthology of American Literature (1979, 1985, 1989); the other two speakers were Martha Banta, an editor of the Harper Anthology of American Literature (1987), and Paul Lauter, general editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (1990). In adapting what I said in Chicago for an issue of College Literature on teaching minority...