Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: Cultural narratives and American identities
  • The land of plenty: American popular culture and the literary immigrant in C.Y. Lee's The Flower Drum Song and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
  • What's for sale: consumer fantasy, American women, and narratives of social mobility in Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha and The I Love Lucy Show
  • The celluloid fantasy: negotiating the ethnic male star image in William Saroyan's Rock Wagram
  • Leaving the dark room in a lighter mood: narrating invisibility in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.