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Helen Hunt Jackson's novel catalogues Ramona was written to call attention to the terrible plight of the Mission Indians in Southern California. Their struggles are mirrored in the fate of the heroine, however. At the end of the novel, Ramona weds an Indian man, Alessandro. Her decision comes after she has decided to live with the Indians because she was not told she was a 'half breed' until she had lived for many years with whites. Eventually, the novel ends with the words that she has given birth to another "Ramona," the "daughter of Alessandro the Indian." (Jackson, Chapter XXV, novel retrieved on December 8, 2003 at (http://www.xooqi.com/iboox/xo_0024_jackson_ramona.html) After many years of struggle trying to find her identity, Ramona gives birth to a girl whom presumably will have no such struggles. However, the first Ramona's struggles highlight the prejudice and intolerance waged against these native people, the often insurmountable divide between white and native in terms of culture, and the persistence presence of those such as the title character whose very existence was a challenge to this divide.

Picture Bride by Yoshiko Uchida also illustrates a similar tension, between native-born Japanese individuals and recent Japanese immigrants. This internal tension is exacerbated, however, with the nation's entry into World War II, as all individuals of Japanese extraction are forced to live in internment camps, in states of filth and privation. At the beginning of the novel, a young Japanese woman named Hana comes to America to find her identity, to escape Japan and the oppression of women and arranged marriages. However, at first her new husband seems no better than what she has left. Also, Hana's own behaviors and expectations are still quite located in her past community, where female behavior is formal and contained. "Hana was overcome with excitement at the thought of being in America and terrified of the meeting about to take place. What would she say to Taro Takeda when they first met, and for all the days and years after?" (Uchida, Chapter 1, 3) Through the United States, Hana seeks liberation but finds only limitations in marriage and the law, although she also establishes an inner sense of self and identity as a woman, through contact with individuals with other ideas of how Japanese women should behave.

In contrast to these struggles, the anti-heroes of The Dharma Bums seems almost anti-climatic. Kerouac's fictional alter ego seeks a new identity in the wilderness of deserts and roads of California, hoping Buddhism will give him a new philosophical lease on life. For Kerouac, California, the farthest state from New York was the state of anti-civilization. But his community of outsiders exhibits their own cruelty. "Don't you realize all this life is just a dream? Why don't you just relax and enjoy God? God is you, you fool!" says one of Cody's friends, Ray, to a woman in a state of deep paranoia and depression. God is you, Ray believes, is the answer to his own identity struggles, however, the Dharma Bums do not find any answers, because their new viewpoints are too convoluted with their own emotional needs to give them a new, ideological lease on life. All character in all novels demonstrate that wilderness alone will not give one peace, newness is not enough -- rather, one must create one's new Californian identity with previously untapped but preexisting inner strength.