Reviewed by Peter Powers for H-PCAACA@msu.edu
Our past is a problem. Or, more precisely, our sense of
continuity with the past is a problem that affects everything
from the our ability to develop a coherent politics to our
ability to develop a coherent sense of communal or personal
identity. Scholars and writers as diverse in time and
circumstance as Simone Weil, Cynthia Ozick, Michael Kammen, and
George Lipsitz have explored this "crisis of memory" as a salient
feature of 20th century life, a crisis that has been exacerbated
by the development of a consumer society wherein memory, like
everything else, is commodified.
This new collection edited by Singh, Skerrett, and Hogan is a
valuable addition to our understanding of the crisis of memory
and the responses to it that ethnic writers have employed.
Ranging across Jewish, Chinese, African, and other American
literatures, the essays here make a convincing case that, while
dominant cultural practices have worked to erase the memory of
difference that ethnic groups embody, ethnic writers have found a
number of creative ways to employ narrative as "an act of
cultural recovery" (19), an act that need not be either
simplistically nostalgic or romantic, and may indeed act as a
powerful cultural intervention. As Terry DeHay puts it in his
theoretical overview,
If marginalized cultures accept the dominant culture's
narratives
as normative, they will be powerless to resist
domination. if,
instead, they denaturalize these narratives, at the same
time
recuperating their own collective (recessive memories),
they can
provide alternative "collective authorities," with
alternative
(emergent) modes of action" to resist domination. (30)
DeHay's essay serves an excellent introduction to the theoretical
issues surrounding memory and narrative that the other writers
take up in more detailed close readings of specific authors or
periods. Indeed, Dehay's essay and the editors' detailed
introduction stand as useful introductions to the field of
ethnic literature, its history and the variety of its cultural
concerns.
The essays that follow are consistently well-written and
insightful, though, as with any collection, the reader's
knowledge of the various ethnic literatures of the United States
will determine the usefulness of individual essays. Two of the
best are Sharon Jessee's "Time and the Marvelous in Toni
Morrison's _Beloved_," and "Maxine Hong Kingston's Fake Books"
by Debra Shostak. The essays show the variety of approaches in
the collection as Jessee connects Morrison's views of time to
African religions, while Shostak is concerned with the way in
which oral tradition affects Kingston's view of the narrative
self in _The Trip Master Monkey_.
Scholars of popular culture may be most drawn to Betty Bergland's
reading of the use of photographs in Mary Antin's _The Promised
Land_, or to Angelita Reyes study of carnival as a central motif
in the work of Paule Marshall. Both writers draw on significant
sources from the study of popular culture, including George
Lipsitz's _Time Passages_ and the collection of essays on
photography edited by Victor Burgin, _Thinking Photography_.
Even without a detailed knowedge of either Antin or Marshall,
readers should find these essays enlightening in their
application of theories of photography and carnival narrative.
Strong overviews, wide ranging approaches and concerns,
insightful and well written essays. This collection should stand
as a good resource for students of ethnicity and American culture
generally for some time to come.
George Mason U Peter Powers