A. Kroes - Dutch In North-america

ISBN
   

Soort boek
Paperback

People of Dutch descent, in Canada and the United Stares, are the central characters in this book. They have maintained a collective sense of themselves as being meaningfully related, in one way or other, to a far-away country across the ocean. This book explores the many ways in which an ethnic awareness becomes manifest and is maintained over time and across the generations. Emigration has always been the first step - the New Country was already present in the Old, as an image, a promise. People in the Old Country closely followed what happened to those who had moved to America. Many that stayed may have noticed how their relatives across the Atlantic gradually moved away from them, culturally, psychologically, and became relative strangers. Yet the immigrants and their offspring have kept a sense of Dutchness alive. It can be observed in very different settings, such as church life, community life, through the membership in a number of associations. It also appears in writing, expressed in literature or letters home, and allows us yet a different look at Dutch-American ethnicity. This volume explores these many facets of Dutchness in the United States and Canada. It also tries to show how Canada and the United States have offered different settings and have different histories in the way these two societies have coped with ethnic diversity.