The Role of Multiculturalism in African-American Families as Presented in the Select Novels of Omar Tyree and Ishmael Scott Reed

Abstract

Culture is an inevitable part of a nation that represents the life practices and methods. The term may indicate the life style of an ethnic group such as rituals, language, religious practices, social customs, traditions and other methods. It differs from nation to nation according to the ancestral practices of an ethnic group. The real problem arises when there are some multicultural practices that are being introduced or rather enter by different circumstances due to such reasons. The term multiculturalism refers to presence of multicultural ethnic groups live together within a society. Its connection to international relations is multifaceted, woven through political, contextual, and ethnic threads. It aims to creating togetherness among distinct ethnic groups. One of the minority ethnical groups in America is black Americans. They are being addressed as African-Americans on account of their double consciousness. Their state of being holders of two distinct identities often leads to internal crises when American culture dominates over the other.  This paper presents the multicultural conflicts and its impacts as presented in the writings of Omar Tyree and Ishmael Scott Reed. Some of their novels are taken into account for this study. Both of them are living African-American novelists. The theories of ethnicity and multiculturalism are being used to explore the issues from the select novels.