Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates.(Book review)

Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates. Ed. Mary Jo Bona and Irma Maini. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. xiv + 242 pages. $74.50 cloth; $24.95 paper.

A subtitle to this collection could have been "From Margin to Center?", with emphasis on the question mark. These essays chart the achievements of ethnic authors and those who study them, but also a persistent sense of intellectual embattlement no matter how important ethnic studies may seem to have become. Not only the academy, but also US culture as a whole, gives ample reason for this ambivalence. The politics of immigration conflate fears of terrorism and of the cultural other. Anxieties in the United States about a Spanish-speaking "invasion" from the south resonate readily with earlier ideologies of cultural purity marshaled against the Chinese, the Jews of Eastern Europe, and the Black Irish. Little wonder, then, that scholars of ethnic literature receive their newfound importance with an uneasy embrace.

Nevertheless, the achievement of ethnic literary studies is real. Thus, these essays use canonicity to investigate the nature of ethnic literary studies in the present. Who are we, now that the legitimacy of ethnic literary studies is reasonably well-established? An edited collection provides many different answers, but the essays here respond to three central questions: Where have we come from? What is the nature of our practice in the present? What are the issues that we are facing now and in the immediate future?

The first three chapters focus on the development of ethnic literary studies. Especially useful is Veronica Makowsky's contribution, which charts the history of the journal MEL US. Makowsky, the former editor of MELUS, provides a perceptive insider's view of the journal while avoiding the pitfalls of hagiography. Her history traces the early efforts of Katherine Newman to promote activist work that remained broadly accessible, consistent hallmarks of the journal to the present. She also demonstrates the central role of Joseph Skerrett in promoting scholarship of ethnic literature that engaged the broader academy on a deeper level. Finally, Makowsky points briefly toward the future and maps out a course for the journal in coming years. Like the collection as a whole, Makowsky's essay focuses narrowly to speak broadly; through her history she shows not only the significant role of MELUS to ethnic literary study, but also the general shape and development of ethnic literary studies as such.

Essays in the second section focus on discrete authors and demonstrate the sophistication of current practices. Especially noteworthy are essays by Joe Kraus and Wenying Xu. Kraus's study of The Great Gatsby focuses on Wolfsheim and emphasizes the centrality of ethnicity to the novel. His work illustrates the effect that ethnic literary studies have had on the canon, creating new understandings of everything from colonial sermons to Huckleberry Finn and beyond. If Gatsby is not exactly decentered, our understanding of the novel is surely reconfigured by considering the role of ...