Word: mosaic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...19th century. Though different and perhaps more problematic than those who have come before, the latest immigrants are helping form a new society, a variation and intensification of the great American experiment. Too complicated and diffuse to be described as a melting pot, or even a goulash or a mosaic, that society today is really a collection of intertwining subcultures, each contributing its own character to the nation's life -- from food to fashion, from art to politics -- while retaining its distinctiveness...
...shrinkage of literal Wasps as a factor in the American mosaic is as inevitable as the multiplication tables, and a matter of little moment. What matters more is the shrinking of their values in the American mind. If Americans don't seem particularly hardworking or civic-minded these days, that is, at least in part, because the ways of the Wasp (now usually labeled "middle-class" or "Eurocentric") are such common targets of criticism $ and abuse. Anyone evincing them is apt to be labeled repressed, inauthentic, uptight or an "ice person...
Although chronically plagued by crime and violence, the gateway still beckons. Family by family, block by block, each ethnic group adds its own restaurants, markets and schools to the Acre's evolving mosaic. St. Patrick's Catholic Church, built for Irish immigrants in 1831, and the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, circa 1906, remain firm spiritual landmarks for each generation of new workers. "At midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, Silent Night is now sung in Vietnamese," says David McKean, 40, a third-generation Acre- ite of Scottish and Irish descent. "For some it's a sign of unity. For others...
...traditional metaphor for this is that of a mosaic. But Richard Rodriguez, the Mexican-American essayist who is a psalmist for our new hybrid forms, points out that the interaction is more fluid than that, more human, subject to daily revision. "I am Chinese," he says, "because I live in San Francisco, a Chinese city. I became Irish in America. I became Portuguese in America." And even as he announces this new truth, Portuguese women are becoming American, and Irishmen are becoming Portuguese, and Sydney (or is it Toronto?) is thinking to compare itself with the "Chinese city" we know...
From the dolphin tile mosaic in the women's bathroom to the beige upholstered sitting area on the second of its three floors, Le Pli exudes understatement like the MAC exudes sweat...