If the mirror of literature reveals actions and perceptions, the lamp of literature shows the effects of these actions and perceptions, and thus it implicitly suggests what might be done to change them.
Ethnicity
From the Greek root ethnos (tribe, social group, community), ethnicity refers to one's primary cultural setting: for instance, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, or Jewish. American authors bring a wide range of ethnic backgrounds to the reader's consideration. Ignorance is often a major factor in promoting racial prejudice, but knowledge and understanding are powerful forces toward overcoming such surface differences based on the color of one's skin or the country of one's origin. Literature shows readers the world through someone else's eyes, and thus can broaden the experience and tolerance of strangers for strangers.
Writer Laurence Yep has experienced the effects of mainstream American prejudice toward Asian cultures. Yep attended school in Chinatown but lived in an African American neighborhood of San Francisco. This diverse exposure made him sensitive to racial difference in general, and to his own particular difference from mainstream America. His young-adult novel The Star Fisher (1991) deals with prejudice toward Chinese Americans in 1927 Clarksburg, West Virginia. Yep's historical perspective allows readers to see how racial prejudices have changed between the time in which the story is set, and the contemporary time in which it was written.
