Can someone help me with this question from the book Farewell to Manzanar

Is literature a mirror held up to nature, which can render the fullness of life, in all its goodness and evil? Or is literature a lamp that shines out to illuminate all it touches, rather than a mirror that merely reflects? Reading literature is simply a way of opening our eyes to the new, of seeing more, and so we should embrace both of these perspectives, the mirror and the lamp.

The mirror metaphor helps the reader see why the world reflected in literature is full of both ugliness and beauty; literature spares nothing in its hunger to reveal life just as it is. The lamp metaphor takes readers to the same place, shining a light on various aspects of human experience. Throughout the history of the United States, many of the most painful issues of the day—prejudice, discrimination, violence, exclusion—have found their way into the stories and accounts of American literature. In examining texts dealing with race and prejudice throughout the course of American history, readers can see what has changed, and sadly, what has not. Discrimination based on differences—skin color, religion, gender, and the like—continue to plague this country even today. If the mirror of literature reveals actions and perceptions, the lamp of literature shows the effects of these actions and perceptions, and thus it implicitly suggests what might be done to change them.

Ethnicity

From the Greek root ethnos (tribe, social group, community), ethnicity refers to one's primary cultural setting: for instance, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, or Jewish. American authors bring a wide range of ethnic backgrounds to the reader's consideration. Ignorance is often a major factor in promoting racial prejudice, but knowledge and understanding are powerful forces toward overcoming such surface differences based on the color of one's skin or the country of one's origin. Literature shows readers the world through someone else's eyes, and thus can broaden the experience and tolerance of strangers for strangers.

Farewell to Manzanar (1973), by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, continues the theme of struggle and triumph. Jeanne Houston describes her family's experience as Japanese Americans living in California in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The consequences of that attack, for the Wakatsukis and many other Japanese American families, were dramatic and rapid. As suspicion and fear of Japanese increased, Executive Order 9066 required people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to relocate to internment camps. The Wakatsukis were therefore transferred to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, where they lived confined for three years. Farewell to Manzanar traces the humiliation and psychological strain imposed by internment, told from the point of view of seven-year-old Jeanne, who witnessed firsthand how "[t]olerance had turned to distrust and irrational fear. The hundred-year-old tradition of anti-Orientalism on the west coast soon resurfaced, more vicious than ever." The memoir follows their return to their old life and the humiliation and confusion from the sanctioned racism that follow the author into adulthood.

Is literature a mirror held up to nature, which can render the fullness of life, in all its goodness and evil? Or is literature a lamp that shines out to illuminate all it touches, rather than a mirror that merely reflects? Reading literature is simply a way of opening our eyes to the new, of seeing more, and so we should embrace both of these perspectives, the mirror and the lamp.

The mirror metaphor helps the reader see why the world reflected in literature is full of both ugliness and beauty; literature spares nothing in its hunger to reveal life just as it is. The lamp metaphor takes readers to the same place, shining a light on various aspects of human experience. Throughout the history of the United States, many of the most painful issues of the day—prejudice, discrimination, violence, exclusion—have found their way into the stories and accounts of American literature. In examining texts dealing with race and prejudice throughout the course of American history, readers can see what has changed, and sadly, what has not. Discrimination based on differences—skin color, religion, gender, and the like—continue to plague this country even today. If the mirror of literature reveals actions and perceptions, the lamp of literature shows the effects of these actions and perceptions, and thus it implicitly suggests what might be done to change them.

Ethnicity

From the Greek root ethnos (tribe, social group, community), ethnicity refers to one's primary cultural setting: for instance, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, or Jewish. American authors bring a wide range of ethnic backgrounds to the reader's consideration. Ignorance is often a major factor in promoting racial prejudice, but knowledge and understanding are powerful forces toward overcoming such surface differences based on the color of one's skin or the country of one's origin. Literature shows readers the world through someone else's eyes, and thus can broaden the experience and tolerance of strangers for strangers.

Farewell to Manzanar (1973), by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, continues the theme of struggle and triumph. Jeanne Houston describes her family's experience as Japanese Americans living in California in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The consequences of that attack, for the Wakatsukis and many other Japanese American families, were dramatic and rapid. As suspicion and fear of Japanese increased, Executive Order 9066 required people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to relocate to internment camps. The Wakatsukis were therefore transferred to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, where they lived confined for three years. Farewell to Manzanar traces the humiliation and psychological strain imposed by internment, told from the point of view of seven-year-old Jeanne, who witnessed firsthand how "[t]olerance had turned to distrust and irrational fear. The hundred-year-old tradition of anti-Orientalism on the west coast soon resurfaced, more vicious than ever." The memoir follows their return to their old life and the humiliation and confusion from the sanctioned racism that follow the author into adulthood.