Assimilation Into the Literary Mainstream? The Classification of Ethnic Minority Authors in Newspaper Reviews in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany.

This study examines to what extent literary critics in the U.S., the Netherlands and Germany have drawn ethnic boundaries in reviews of ethnic minority writers between 1983 and 2009 and to what degree these boundaries have changed in the course of ethnic minority writers' careers and across time. Through content analysis, we show that American critics less frequently classify Mexican American authors as ethnic minority authors than Dutch and German reviewers do in the case of Moroccan and Turkish minority authors, indicating relatively weak and strong ethnic boundaries respectively. Furthermore, whereas American reviewers are less likely to address the ethic background of established Mexican American authors compared to debuting authors, the reverse is the case with regard to Turkish German authors, hampering assimilation into the literary mainstream. Both starting as well as established Moroccan Dutch authors are less likely to be classified as "ethnic" across time, pointing to boundary shifting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]