Rooting Multiculturalism: The Work of Louis Adamic

Rooting Multiculturalism: The Work of Louis Adamic offers the American immigrant writer, editor, and social critic’s insights about democracy and diversity to the ongoing culture wars. This study begins with a chronological overview of Adamic’s career from his boyhood in Slovenia, to the growth of his reputation as an advocate for ethnic diversity in the 1930s and 1940s, to the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death in 1951. Rooting Multiculturalism then considers Adamic’s relationship to the development of American cultural pluralism between the Wars, his populist rhetoric of progressive social reform, and his analysis of the plight of second-generation immigrants. By evaluating Adamic’s life and work, Rooting Multiculturalism reveals that multiculturalism has a longer and deeper history than is often acknowledged. Moreover, this study underscores Adamic’s dynamic model of multicultural identity and American citizenship in which individuals draw from a variety of cultural and philosophical perspectives without being bound by any of them. Dan Shiffman is an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia.