Monima: A Novel of the Immigrant Experience in the Multilingual Early Republic

First published in 1802, Monima offers a unique look at the lives of the poor in Philadelphia: Describing her novel as a very plain picture of life, a plea on behalf of the oppressed, and life-worn children of affliction,\u27\u27 the author exposes the class fractures within a society we have mythologized as egalitarian (99). Such myths, the novel shows, are based on ignorance; as one character, awakened to the existence of the poor, remarks, one half of the world don\u27t know how the other half live (196). Though the identity of Monima\u27s author was not discovered for over 220 years, the novel\u27s focus on the immigrant underclass reflects her lived experience. Mary Endress Ralston was the trilingual child of German and French immigrants whose fortunes rose and fell in the Revolutionary era. But rather than writing a factual record of her life, Mary Ralston created her portrait of Monima and her world through a complex multilingual and multiethnic alchemy. The resulting novel, which highlights language justice through the trials of its beleaguered heroine and her father, is a complex synthesis of literary modes that has been largely overlooked. We are proud to present Monima, the first American novel by an English,language learner, and Mary Endress Ralston, an early American novelist who has been hiding in plain sight