How do ethnic writers promote or critique the model minority myth? What controversies arise around representations of minority identity? How can we learn to read these controversies critically, and thereby deepen our understanding of broader social issues? This course focuses on controversial works of ethnic literature that have sparked enduring questions and offered important answers to the meaning of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity, as well as national and transnational identity. We will not only pay close formal attention to these texts but also read them in the context of the varied histories and critical conversations that attend them. Our challenge will be to make sense of the social through the literary—by grappling with the complexity of ethnic representation to develop a critical perspective on debates about race and ethnicity in the United States. Readings will include the following: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, and a course reader.