Critical contexts. The hyphenated American in twentieth- and twenty-first century America / Annette Harris Powell -- Intersecting lives: critics and the literature of American multicultural identity / Jessica Boykin -- Sherman Alexie and the absolute truth of double-consciousness / Kathryn West -- Four American poets explore hybrid identity formation and familial relationships / Rickie-Ann Legleitner -- Critical readings. Legalized hearts: legal identity in Larry Kramer's The normal heart / Gad Guterman -- Unspoken histories and one-man museums: lingering trauma and disappearing dads in the work of Chang-rae Lee / Michael Gorman -- "She's left me her legacy nonetheless": boundaries and female connection in Cuban American women's literature / Jessica Labbé -- Race, ethnicity, and national identity in Paule Marshall's Brown girl, brownstones, or how the Barbadian becomes American / Joanna Davis-McElligatt -- "A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut": junk food and Bildungsroman in Bich Minh Nguyen's Stealing Buddha's dinner / Tina Powell -- Neither insider nor outside but both: multicultural identity in Edith Eaton's "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" and "The inferior woman" / Linda Trinh Moser -- Intimate relations: land and love in The descendants / Leanne P. Day -- Bridging borders: Leslie Marmon Silko's cross-cultural vision in the atomic age / Kyoko Matsunaga -- A tent of one's own: negotiating Mourning Dove's authorial identity / John C. Orr & Enid R. Spitz -- "All growth involves change, all change involves loss": modernism, mourning, and social change in Gish Jen's Mona in the promised land / Conor Picken.