Despite democratic values and principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States, the goal of social justice championed by the late Martin Luther King, Jr. continues to be elusive. My dissertation research project crosses disciplinary boundaries to evaluate literary and legal texts as narratives that have the capacity to change and affect national principles and policies. The abstract and universal language of law creates incongruities between universal rules and particular practices affecting minority groups. Literature exposes law's contradictions and deficiencies by highlighting the disjuncture between legal ideals of equality and justice and the abridgement of constitutionally guaranteed rights for people of color.

My dissertation examines dialogues between seven narratives of twentieth century minority American literature and four Supreme Court cases. The literary texts I have chosen for this project challenge dominant legal paradigms. Part one compares responses of the 1940 novels Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner and Native Son by Richard Wright to the 1896 Supreme Court opinion that institutionalized segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson. Contrary to Faulkner's novel, Native Son highlights a narrative of exclusion that anticipates the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education. Part two focuses on the abridgement of rights of Japanese American communities by internment during World War II. John Okada's 1957 No-No Boy, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston's 1973 Farewell to Manzanar, and Julie Otsuka's 2002 When the Emperor Was Divine expose the racism underlying the national narrative of "military necessity" sanctioned by the 1944 Korematsu v. United States. The third section highlights the contradictions embodied in discussions of rights of Mexican American and Native American communities to land ownership by contrasting Américo Paredes's 1990 George Washington Gómez: A Mexicotexan Novel with contract principles of equality and Louise Erdrich's 1987 Tracks with the 1992 Yakima v. Confederated Tribes. My dissertation demonstrates that while rewriting history to include minority voices, literature exposes the vulnerability of minority populations to denial of rights by the legal system with the hope that law will create solutions to racial dilemmas confronting the twenty-first century.