A Mixed race

"Entering one of the most topical and energetic debates of our time, this collection of new essays addresses the issue of ethnicity, focusing on colonial America, a period which has been previously overlooked in recent scholarship about the formation of American culture. The essays [in this book] suggest that American culture has arisen out of an unusually rich and interactive ethnic mix--inescapably multicultural from its very beginnings-- and that this representation of cultural differences has fundamentally defined American culture. They argue that a culture shaped by responses to ethnic and racial difference is not merely a modern circumstance but one at the base of American history"--Back cover.