Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature

Characterized as “the silent minority,” the Portuguese have had a varied and checkered presence in American literature. Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature materially enhances our understanding of a field that until now only a handful of readers had noticed. Ranging from considerations of nineteenth– and twentieth–century canonical writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Edith Wharton, to present-day Portuguese-Americans such as Julian Silva, Fra…