"But what if the soul of America can be found instead in its literature? In Randolph Bourne’s essay..."

“But what if the soul of America can be found instead in its literature? In Randolph Bourne’s essay “Transnational America?” In James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time? In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon or Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick? The epigraph for All We Say is an oft-quoted excerpt from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then, I contradict myself. / (I am large. I…