Jewish American literature holds an essential place in the
literary history of the United States. It encompasses traditions of writing in
English, primarily, as well as in other languages, the most important of which has been
Yiddish. While critics and authors generally acknowledge the notion of a distinctive corpus and practice of writing about
Jewishness in America, many writers resist being pigeonholed as 'Jewish voices'. Also, many nominally Jewish writers cannot be considered representative of Jewish American literature, one example being
Isaac Asimov.