Introduction: Cultural narratives and American identities -- The land of plenty: American popular culture and the literary immigrant in C.Y. Lee's The Flower Drum Song and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita -- What's for sale: consumer fantasy, American women, and narratives of social mobility in Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha and The I Love Lucy Show -- The celluloid fantasy: negotiating the ethnic male star image in William Saroyan's Rock Wagram -- Leaving the dark room in a lighter mood: narrating invisibility in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
