Through readings of a variety of literary and historical narratives from throughout the Americas dating from the 16th century to the present, I show that miscegenation, its sudden and disrupting revelation in these narratives serving as the catalyst for utopian and/or apocalyptic rhetoric, becomes a trope for New World cultural identity (Utopia and Apocalypse themselves being crucial ideas for this hemisphere). I call by the name "Astonishment" the resulting space created by the sudden revelation of miscegenation in these narratives.