Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-218) and index.

Introduction : rites of passage, contact zones, and the American frontiers -- Double consciousness in the borderlands : the frontier autobiographies of James P. Beckwourth and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins -- The second coming of trickster : culture contact and trickster border narratives -- Bartered brides and compulsory bachelors on the Chinese American frontier : the short stories of Sui Sin Far -- Arranged betrothals and mixed marriages : the Japanese American romances of Onoto Watanna -- Conservation, anthropology, and the closed frontier : the southwestern writings of Mary Austin.

"James P. Beckwourth, a half-black fur trader; Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a Paiute translator; Salishan author Mourning Dove; Cherokee novelist John Rollin Ridge; Sui Sin Far, an Anglo-Chinese short story writer, and her sister, romance novelist Onoto Watanna; and Mary Austin, a white southwestern writer - each of these intercultural writers faces a rite of passage into a new social order. Their writings negotiate their various frontier ordeals: the encroachment of pioneers on the land; reservation life; assimilation; Christianity; battles over territories and resources; exclusion; miscegenation laws; and the devastation of the environment."

"In West of the Border Noreen Groover Lape raises issues inherent in American pluralism today by broaching timely concerns about American frontier politics, conceptualizing frontiers as intercultural contact zones, and expanding the boundaries of frontier literary studies by giving voice to minority writers."--Jacket.