TEACHING FOR ETHNIC LITERACY: A comparative approach

Beyond the melting pot: ethnicity in American society When The Melting Pot, a play written by the English Jewish author Israel Zangwill, was staged in New York City in 1908, it became an overwhelming success. The great ambition of the play’s composer-protagonist, David Quixano, was to create an American symphony that would personify his deep conviction that his adopted land was a nation in which all ethnic differences would amalgamate and a novel person would emerge from this new ethnic synthesis. The play, considered an inferior one by drama critics, was eagerly embraced by Americans because it embodied an ideology that was pervasive in the United States at the turn of the century.