The Christmas Journey by Donna Vanliere

The Christmas Journey by Donna Vanliere

During World War I, the rising visibility of anticolonial and antiracist movements exposed contradictions between the U.S. democratic mission in Europe and racist practices against people of color at home. Yet the professional success stories of people of color gave ideological support to the notion that liberal antiracism was spreading within the United States.

Challenging conventional accounts of U.S. ethnic literature rooted in 1960s and 1970s social movements, Cynthia H. Tolentino sees this literary work as emerging from a political climate in which arguments about the integration of racial minorities and the moral legitimacy of U.S. international leadership are intertwined. Probing how sociologists including Robert E. Park, Gunnar Myrdal, and Emory Bogardus situated Asian Americans, Filipinos, and African Americans as model citizens and problems, Tolentino contends that such studies served as a staging ground for writers of color to become narrators of racial identity, citizenship, and U.S. neocolonialism.

Tracing the literary engagements of Richard Wright, Carlos Bulosan, and Jade Snow Wong with the sociology of race, Tolentino assesses their works as critical expressions of class negotiation on the global stage and illuminates the significance of U.S. ethnic literature.

Donna VanLiere is a best-selling novelist who has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today. The Christmas Shoes and The Christmas Blessing, both turned into CBS Television movies, The Christmas Secret, The Christmas Journey, and The Christmas Hope, which was converted into a Lifetime feature, are among her best-selling Christmas Hope series. She's also the author of Seeking Grace and The Angels of Morgan Hill. VanLiere has won a Retailer's Choice Award for Fiction, a Dove Award, a Silver Angel Award, an Audie Award for outstanding inspirational fiction, and a Gold Medallion Book of the Year nomination. She is a great public speaker who speaks at conferences on a regular basis. She, her husband, and their children live in Franklin, Tennessee.