STOCKHOLM / ROME, Sep 12 2019 (IPS) – When I in 1980 first arrived in America it was a new world to me. I went from New York to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and like so many visitors and migrants before me I was overwhelmed by both familiar and strange impressions. Familiar due to books I had read and movies I had seen, strange since I encountered unexpected things and new because both I and several of those I met compared themselves to the “old world”, i.e. Euroasia and parts of Africa.
A sense of uniqueness, admiration for an assumed freshness and difference, can be discerned in the writing of several American writers. Particularly during the 19th centu…