Manzanas, Ana Ma. and Jesus Benito 1999: Narratives of Resistance: Literature and Ethnicity in the United States and the Caribbean.(Resena de libro)

Publication: Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Publication Date: 01-JUN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)

Manzanas, Ana Ma and Jesus Benito 1999: Narratives of Resistance: Literature and Ethnicity in the United States and the Caribbean. Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. 337 pp.

The volume Narratives of Resistance: Literature and Ethnicity in the United States and the Caribbean edited by Manzanas and Benito is undoubtedly an important contribution to the growing field of ethnic studies in Spain, with such valuable predecessors as Aitor Ibarrola's Fiction and Ethnicity in NorthAmerica (1995) and Olga Barrios and Bernard Bell's Contemporary Literature in the African Diaspora (1997). This publication resulted partly from a 1997 international conference organized by the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha dedicated to the topic of ethnicity and literature, but other materials were later incorporated that enhanced the scope of the book. As a whole, the book sets out, as the editors explain, "to invite readers to further their rethinking of American and Caribbean literatures" (16), and this objective is clearly fulfilled and even surpassed by the extremely interesting and thought-provoking content of the twenty-three articles that compose the work.

This collection of articles is a direct heir to Paul Lauter's comparativist perspective in his seminal work The Heath Anthology of American Literature (1994) in a number of ways: firstly, because it responds to the redefinition of the American literary canon by placing canonical and non-canonical authors side by side; secondly, due to its deep investment in an effort "to reconnect literature and its study with the society and culture of which it is fundamentally a part" (Lauter xxxiii); third and very importantly, thanks to its representation of the wide variety of cultures that constitute the rich contemporary tapestry of American literature. Springing from diverse theoretical perspectives, it comes as no surprise that postcolonial and feminist approaches figure prominently, although not exclusively, in this work, as they adapt particularly well to the objectives of the collection. All these articles propound an enlightening discussion of the proposed authors and texts which intends to illuminate the different strategies instrumental in performing a twofold task: on one hand, the opposition and resistance to mainstream impositions and, on the other, the forging of alternative models for a new sense of representation of the ethnic self. In this sense, all the authors selected in the collection engage in a process of deconstruction of the traditional boundaries between the concepts of center and margins by consciously subverting their hierarchical order and by proposing fresh insights into the integrative and dialogic nature of literary texts. The volume offers thus a very updated rendering of problematic but very productive issues such as race and ethnicity constructs, silence and absence, cultural diversity, gender equality, racial discrimination, the rewritings of (hi)story, folk elements, linguistic subversion, to name a few. So a well-informed and contemporary range of concerns pervades the present volume.

Hence the two crucial ideas of resistance to the imposed...

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