Bridging latino diaspora through consciousness: Examining The Cultural Canon in José Rivera’s Marisol

For over a decade, the general contemporary American literary milieu has become a
cultural one, the surge is diversity, and the agenda is to set a new canon with a recognized
mosaic. Diversity and multi culturalism should cater as a recognized “canon” for both
modern American dramatic politics and modern cultural politics alike. Exposition and
portrayal of minorities, racial/cultural issues and diasporas, that were for decades the
forbidden territory, have now become the norm-if not the parade- of modern American
theater. With due regard to America’s centuries – old assumption of being the cultural
“crucible”; the melting pot where multiculturalism crescendos into a monoculture, today,
with an overflow of diverse minorities, the melting pot falls too short to maintain it.
Consequently, American literary canon started to suffer a state of moral discrepancy. It This paper discusses and examines the existing cultural canon in modern America
as well as its representation on stage. The shift of the canon from the stereotypical “white
male” into other colors and genders alike becomes –thus- a matter of appropriateness. The
dilemma of most writers was mainly how to uplift this new “canon” from the womb of a
“minority” into the crux of a universal, multicultural humanism; to “dehistoricize culture,
race, and gender”(Joseph Lee, p. 621). The paper also hypothizes that Latinos’- and
others’- strong feel of diaspora and cultural uprootedness stems mainly from their lack of
consciousness and insight. The paper sets its basic discussion unto three main clusters or
domains of bridging a condition as well as a sense of diaspora. 
badly needed an apocalypse. (uhpok-uh-lips)