[Review of] Manuel de Jesus Hemandez-Gutierrez and David William Foster, eds. Literatura Chicana, 1965-1995: An Anthology in Spanish, English, and Calo

The works included in this anthology, many of them previously printed, reflect six characteristic themes of Chicana/o contemporary literature: the search for identity, feminism, conservatism, revisionism, homoeroticism, and internationalism (xix). Organized chronologically according to various literary genres and replete with many useful notes, the anthology contains no index. Further, Literatura Chicana could also be assigned as required reading in American Studies courses, specifically in contemporary American literature courses, even though the editors suggest that the anthology be adopted for university level humanities, Spanish, ethnic, Chicana/o literature courses, in women\u27s studies programs and social science departments

[Review of] Farida Karodia. Coming Home and Other Stories

In Coming Home and Other Stories, Farida Karodia, South African born author now residing in Canada, has written a classic text which I recommend for use in African, contemporary, world literature, and women\u27s studies courses

[Review of] David Leiwei Li, Imagining the Nation: Asian American Literature and Cultural Consent

Whenever the nation is imagined, Americans of Asian ancestry are excluded by common cultural consent as alien/alienated Others, as citizens of their ancestral nations. Due to recent immigration from many Asian nations, the globalization of economies, including the Pacific Rim, and especially the efforts of some Asian American writers, the situation has improved--somewhat. Still, if Asian-American writers stress the American in their representations, they are denying the Asian. If they stress the Asian, they have bought into American cultural consent its racist representations of Asian-Americans. Further, they themselves can\u27t help but think within the nation\u27s ongoing restrictive racist cultural consent paradigm, because as Americans they have unconsciously internalized it

[Review of] Maryse Conde. A Season in Rihata

Born and now residing in Guadaloupe [Guadeloupe], Dr. Conde received the Grand Prix de Litteraire de la Femme from France for her contributions to Caribbean literature (an interesting honor, in view of Conde\u27s perception of France as cynically instrumental in the destruction and dismemberment of African civilization)

[Review of] Julie Brown, ed. Ethnicity and the American Short Story

Replete with essays, all excellent in diverse ways and covering a broad range of American ethnicities, this cutting-edge text successfully answers questions about claims of uniqueness and difference for ethnic American short stories as the grounds for inclusion in critical discussions of the genre

[Review of] Magdalena J. Zaborowska, ed. Other Americans, Other Americas: The Politics and Poetics of Multiculturalism

The editor of this text, Magdalene J. Zaborowska of Aarhus University, is a respected feminist specialist in ethnic American studies. In her introduction she provides readers with an admirably concise overview of the history of the multicultural movement and the current state of the recent multicultural wars over curriculum, literature, and the canon in the United States. Zaborowska chose the essays in this anthology because they focus on the multicultural reality that always has existed in the United States rather than on monolithic essentialist representations of history and national identity characteristic of previous American literary history

[Review of] Elias Miguel Munoz. Crazy Love

In a supposed interview with Rolling Stone, Muñoz\u27s major character, lead singer-composer Julian Toledo of Julian and the L.A. Scene, sums up Paul Simon\u27s song Crazy Love as about the love of music, about relationships ... about family. Indeed, this book takes the form of a song in which the author is simultaneously the composer and conductor orchestrating the three elements of music, relationship, and family harmonically into the text through the deployment of a dazzling grab bag of modem and postmodern authorial techniques. These include mock-ups of interviews (written) and in video format; songs seemingly printed as appendices to the text; ingenuous epistles to her big brother Julian written by his little sister, which provide relief amidst all the heaviness; as well as random entry into the head sets of a variety of characters. Reminiscent of James Joyce, or the collages of John Dos Passos, but primarily of Oscar Hijuelos\u27s The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love, Muñoz\u27s technique integrates Cuban music as an indigenous element into the work. Crazy Love, however, moves beyond Mambo Kings in its treatment of the commercialized homogenization to which ethnic music can be reduced when exploited: the chasm between ethnic authenticity and the marketplace of compromise, of sellout; the pressure to popularize ethnicity into, You know, meaningless lyrics, catchy melodies, etc., as Julian sarcastically puts it

[Review of] Nicolas Kanellos and Jorge A. Huerta, eds. Nuevos Pasos: Chicano and Puerto Rican Drama

The major weakness of this text is that it is a reprint of a 1979 special edition of Revista Chicano-Riqueña. Unfortunately, both the overall introduction (a history of Spanish American, Chicano, and New York Puerto Rican theater), as well as introductions to each play (which contain biographical data, analysis, and practical suggestions for staging) does not extend beyond 1979. Also, although most illustrations are excellent, the pictorial centerfold is a crowded and confusing collage