Introduction: thinking about "pure pluralism" / Multicultural furor: the reception of Other solitudes / Cultural authenticity and the construction of Pan-Indian metanarrative / Postindian autoinscriptions: the origins of essentialism and pluralism in descriptive tribal names / Democratic blues: Houston Baker and the representation of culture / Raising Cane on the theoretical plane: Jean Toomer's racial personae / Humor and identity in ethnic autobiography: Zora Neale Hurston and Jerre Mangione / Crossing borders: an aesthetic practice in writings by Gloria Anzaldua / New mestizos: traces of a quincentenary miracle in Old World Spanish and New World English texts / Marginality and William Faulkner's Light in August / The multi-voiced basis of Henry Roth's literary success in Call it sleep / Comments