Racism is a major issue that has affected the United States of America since its infancy. Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959) deals with the impact of racism on the life of the Younger, a poor black family living in the South Side of Chicago. As the play demonstrates, the Younger suffer from racial discrimination in housing industry, living space, and employment. Their attempt to challenge the racist policies takes the form of buying a house in a predominantly white neighborhood. The importance of the play is twofold. Firstly, it was the first play by an Afro-American woman to be presented on Broadway; and secondly, it foreshadows many of issues which the American society experience in the 1960s.

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I.Poetry, Politics, and Technology: The poetic scene in Iraq underwent significant changes following the collapse of the ruling regime and the invasion of the country by the International Coalition headed by the United States of America in 2003. These changes mainly took place on two levels: political and technological. In post-2003, normal existence became impossible for the Iraqi people as their country plunged into an unprecedented and wholesale waves of destruction  and violence. In “As Iraqis See It,” Messing concisely described the situation of Iraqis ‘expressing anger and gloom, exasperation and despair.’ He says: The overwhelming sense is that of a society undergoing a catastrophic breakdown from the never-ending waves of violence, criminality, and brutality inflicted on it by insurgents, militias, jihadis, terrorists, soldiers, policemen, bodyguards, mercenaries, armed gangs, warlords, kidnappers and everyday thugs. ‘Inside Iraq’ … suggests how the relentless and cumulative effects of these various vicious crimes have degraded virtually every aspect of the nation’s social, economic, professional, and personal life. (qtd in Adelman, 2008, p.184) What happened in 2003 onward, however, is not strange or unexpected. It is a culmination of a long history of blood shedding, politically-motivated murders, several coups d’états, a wearing war with Iran(1980-1988), thirteen years of tiring and exhausting economic sanctions imposed by the United Nation after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait(1991-2003), and a ruthless totalitarian system that makes Iraq “suitable for nothing,” in the words of the Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh(2004, p.209). (For more information about the modern history of Iraq, see Al-Athari,2008 and Anderson and Stanfield, 2004)

Human physical features such as skin color usually play an important role in defining who the person is. In many societies skin color contributes to determining social status and self-worth. This problems becomes more acute in case of women whose markers of beauty like having lighter skin mean she can enjoy more privileges in terms of partner choice, work, and status than women of dark skin. The present paper aims at exploring the impact of skin color on the life of Emma who is color stricken in Zora Neale Hurston Color Struck. Rather than discussing this issue in relation to the color-based discrimination by the whitedominated society against the black in Americ, the play focuses on the pernicious effects of internalizing the color-based feelings of inferiority among the black themselves. The paper argues that obession with one's skin color is not conduisve to one's well-being. Rather than happiness and empowerment, it leads to self-marginalization and life-long anxiety.Keywords: Hurston, Color Struck, Emma, inferiority. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891 and spending the majority of her formative years in Eatonville, Florida, "the first incorporated black township in the United States and the setting for most of her fiction"(Oslica, Race, Class, Gender), Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) wrote in a time when "racism had proven relentless and oppression undaunting"(Cortez) From her early formative years in this city, Hurston was fully aware of the complexities of life black people in general, and black women in particular were facing. She was often troubled by threefold lingering question that keep haunting women in the black communities, namely; race, class, and gender. In her seminal study Rereading the Harlem Renaissance, Jones(qtd in Oslica, p.1) comments on the significance of these questions in Hurston's writings.

Based on the real story of the racial clash that took place between two hyphenated minorities in the United States of America, namely; the Korean and the African in Los Angeles in 1990, this paper sets out to explore issues that go beyond this apparently simple racial conflict. Kimchee and Chitlins, indeed, is a serious attempt by the Chinese-American dramatist Elizabeth Wong, being herself a journalist and a member of minority community, to dig deep into the problems that plague and are still plaguing these communities, namely; racial discrimination and profiling, stereotyping and marginalization, and loss of cultural heritage. Drawing on the theories of 'Melting Pot' and 'Salad Bowl', the paper discusses the politics of identity in relation to the main characters' attempt to define 'who are they' and 'how do they look at themselves as well as at others in their multicultural society.' To overcome these problems, the dramatist encourages members of minorities to reach out to each other and understand the cultural as well as other types of differences that do separate them. Rather than yielding to, and assimilating into the main society, Wong advocates preserving the cultural heritage besides developing the skills of coexisting and tolerating the Other. The title of the play is a clear reference to Wong's suggestion as 'Kimchee' is the 'heart of Korea'-its most popular meal-and 'Chitlins' is a translation of the 'history' of African people in America. Putting them beside each other certainly means the possibility of coexistence and mutual understanding and respect.Keywords: Wong, Kimchee and Chitlins, minorities, Koreans, Afro-Americans, (anti)assimilation, coexistence, cultural differences. Immigration, Identity, and MulticulturalismLeaving homeland and immigrating to another country does not mean physical displacement only, it also means psychological, social, and cultural displacement. The immigrants in their host societies are often introduced to a completely new set of values, ideas, life styles, and social and cultural norms. This results in a 'crisis of identity'; a common experience which almost all the immigrants share. Kobena Mercer discusses the pivotal place 'identity' occupies in the life of immigrants. He eloquently remarks: