Carefully reread paragraph 12, in which Dumas explains how having an “American” name and speaking English without a foreign accent was like having “X-ray glasses.” Is Dumas’s portrayal of Americans in...

Carefully reread paragraph 12, in which Dumas explains how having an “American” name and speaking English without a foreign accent was like having “X-ray glasses.” Is Dumas’s portrayal of Americans in this passage and elsewhere in the essay flattering? Humorous? Honest? Dumas notes that “people assumed I was American.” What definition of “American” must she (and those she writes about) be assuming? Is such a definition valid, given evidence she presents elsewhere in the essay and the fact that the United States is often called a nation of immigrants? At what point does an immigrant become an American?