ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the historical and ideological contexts of this literary turn to memory and analyses selected texts which share a specific focus on the American city as a key site of memory for ethnic and racial groups. The turn to memory in American literature reflects the historical development of a volatile cultural pluralism which has characterised the fragmentation of coherent political and cultural publics in the United States over the last thirty years. The chapter examines how selected narratives reconstruct the urban past and address ‘the problem of the embodiment of memory’ Nora refers to. If the story of ethnic passage as a core myth of national identity is troubling for many white ethnic writers it is almost entirely alien to most African-American writers. The progressive urban narrative of immigrant arrival, ghetto communalisation and suburban assimilation has relatively little historical or imaginary relevance to the lives of African-Americans.
