Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dybek, Stuart - Thomas S. Gladsky (essay date Summer 1995)

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Thomas S. Gladsky (essay date Summer 1995)

SOURCE: "From Ethnicity to Multiculturalism: The Fiction of Stuart Dybek," in MELUS, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer, 1995, pp. 105-118.

[In the following essay, Gladsky analyzes the significance of ethnicity in the work of Stuart Dybek.]

The new world culture and old country heritage of approximately fifteen million Americans of Polish descent are among multicultural America's best kept secrets. Historically a quiet minority, they have been eager to acculturate, assimilate, and melt into the mainstream. One of the consequences of this has been a failure to acquaint other Americans with Polish culture—its history and literature—or to establish a recognized ethnic literary tradition. This is not to say that there is not a Polish presence in American letters. From the 1830s and the arrival of the first significant body of Polish émigrés, primarily officers exiled after the 1831 uprising against the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Reg Saner (review date 1980)
   2. Robert Ward (review date 1980)
   3. Bruce Cook (review date 13 January 1980)
   4. Ivan Gold (review date 24 February 1980)
   5. David Clewell (review date Spring-Summer 1980)
   6. David Kubal (review date Autumn 1980)
   7. Joseph Coates (review date 8 April 1990)
   8. Michiko Kakutani (review date 20 April 1990)
   9. Katharine Weber (review date 20 May 1990)
   10. David Montrose (review date 26 July 1991)
   11. Thomas S. Gladsky (essay date Summer 1995)
   12. Stuart Dybek with Mike Nickel and Adrian Smith (interview date Winter 1997)
4. Copyright