Review of Wilfrido H. Corral. El error del acierto. Contra ciertos dogmas latinoamericanos. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, 2013.

Forthcoming in Chasqui

 

Wilfrido H. Corral. El error del acierto. Contra ciertos dogmas latinoamericanos. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, 2013.

Ignacio López-Calvo

University of California, Merced 

            Como en Bolaño traducido: nueva literatura mundial (2011) y otras publicaciones suyas, Corral, en El error del acierto (una segunda edición ampliada del libro que se publicó en Quito en 2006), no tiene reparos en ir contra corriente con afirmaciones polémicas y controvertidas. Si el título del libro parece una inversión del La verdad de las mentiras de Mario Vargas Llosa, el subtítulo da ya pistas de que se trata de un estudio contra lo que el autor considera "dogmas", mitos y clichés en los estudios latinoamericanos, sobre todo en Estados Unidos y el mundo anglosajón. Al igual que en Bolaño traducido, se trata, por tanto, de crítica sobre la crítica. Curiosamente, el autor combina la crítica acérrima de ciertos métodos y libros, con el humor cínico, pidiéndole, por ejemplo, a Jean Franco que sea "franca", lamentando que nunca veremos "los cuadernos de doña Rigoberta" (Menchú), inventando neologismos como "imperio-listos" o parodiando títulos como "la raza cómica". El libro ofrece también varias ideas para potenciales proyectos de investigación en la crítica literaria latinoamericana.

            Corral critica, en particular, los estudios culturales latinoamericanos "concentrados en la santísima trinidad anglosajona de clase, raza y sexo" (14) y aboga en defensa de los estudios literarios. Algunas de estas ideas las había expresado ya en su artículo "Problemas y avatares de los 'estudios culturales hispanoamericanos' de hoy" publicado en 2003 en Revista Hispánica Moderna. Como académico residente en Estados Unidos, se lamenta de ver cómo antiguos especialistas en literatura del mundo anglosajón tratan de basar ahora sus estudios en múltiples ciencias humanas en las que supuestamente no son expertos. Por ende, continúa Corral, en Latinoamérica se los imita y se cita devotamente sólo a críticos de las metrópolis europeas y norteamericanas. El resultado, para el autor, es que la crítica se ha ido deshumanizando y hoy en día languidece bajo la ortodoxia y el imperio de una teoría que la hace cada vez más hermética. En este sentido, el presente estudio se enlace con la crítica llevada a cabo en la antología de ensayos sobre la muerte de la teoría literaria y cultural Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent, que compiló junto con Daphne Patai. En El error del acierto se critica, asimismo, la "deslatinización" de la crítica en el mundo anglosajón, que solo recurre a publicaciones en inglés, ignorando, por tanto, lo publicado en Latinoamérica o bien citando sólo a críticos latinoamericanos con conexiones en Estados Unidos. Se repiten, por tanto, patrones económicos denunciados por la teoría de la dependencia con los que el Primer Mundo explota únicamente las "materias primas" del llamado Tercer Mundo.

            Yendo de lo general a lo particular, El error del acierto tiene dos partes con dos preguntas como títulos: "¿Cómo llegamos a los dogmas del siglo actual?" y "¿Latinoamericanizar la crítica?". La primera parte, que se inicia recordando al lector la defensa que hizo Edward Said de la filología y del humanismo, critica los estudios culturales hispanoamericanistas que, para Corral, "rara vez son estudios, menos culturales y casi nunca hispanoamericanistas" (22). Según él, en Latinoamérica no hay reconocidos practicantes de los estudios culturales, con la excepción de Carlos Monsiváis y Beatriz Sarlo. Bien podría argumentarse, no obstante, que Néstor García Canclini y Nelly Richard, por ejemplo, sí la han practicado y con bastante reconocimiento tanto en Latinoamérica como en Norteamérica. El autor pasa luego a condenar la "jerigonza" (23) hermética en la que se escribe hoy en día la crítica y teoría literarias, así como la "victimología" (34) de los estudios culturales.

Denuncia igualmente el silencio de los "naturales" que siempre necesitan de un experto occidental que hable por ellos. Según Corral, los estudios culturales sólo se enfocan en los aspectos políticos de la cultura, cuando, en realidad, no se puede estudiar a fondo una cultura sin su literatura. Por ello, continúa el autor, se cae en el folklorismo y en un multiculturalismo que considera una sublimación del racismo. Corral, no obstante, propone con optimismo estudios interdisciplinarios como The Spaces of Latin American Literature (2008), de Juan de Castro, como un ejemplo a seguir.

            En el segundo capítulo, Corral reseña varias antologías de crítica literaria, cuestionando los teóricos seleccionados y lo que él considera un rechazo a la literatura. Analiza igualmente varios textos escritos desde una perspectiva post-teórica y pone de relieve un cierto cansancio de la teoría reflejado en los últimos libros de Stanley Fish, Terry Eagleton, Harold Bloom, Edward Said, entre otros. Una vez más, el capítulo acaba de manera positiva al elogiar Theory after Theory (2010), de Nicholas Birns, que sí dialoga con críticos latinoamericanos. El tercer capítulo analiza la herencia de Derrida, al que Corral define como "el propagador del relativismo de entresiglo" (71), y las reacciones del mundo de la teoría literaria con motivo de su fallecimiento. Más adelante, define Literary Theory (1983) como una "mini-biblia de resistencia a la literatura" (75) y acusa a su autor, Terry Eagleton, de apreciar únicamente las teorías que se adhieren al marxismo.

            El capítulo cuatro nos recuerda que Roland Barthes, un "novelista sin novela" (91), fue un crítico literario toda su vida, antes de convertirse en "uno de los cuatro jinetes franceses del apocalipsis" (90) junto a Derrida, Foucault y Lacan. Su lenguaje crítico era tan literario, afirma Corral, que su crítica era casi una novela. El quinto capítulo alaba a Said, al que el autor considera lo más cercano a un intelectual público que se puede dar en Estados Unidos, subrayando su escritura autobiográfica, su compilación más literaria Reflections on Exile y sus estudios de crítica literaria. Después lo contrasta con Harold Bloom, al que tilda de "mercader crítico" (105), de quien critica su desconocimiento del canon hispano y su incapacidad para la autocrítica. En el capítulo que cierra la primera parte, Corral predica con el ejemplo al comentar la obra de varios críticos latinoamericanos, como Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot. Critica, asimismo, el culto latinoamericano del mestizaje, que, según él, se ha confundido con otros neologismos como criollismo, hibridez, heterogeneidad, transculturación. Pero los "nuevos mestizajes" a los que se refiere son "el producto clónico de unas ciencias sociales sui generis" (121). El capítulo incluye también algunas experiencias personales relacionadas con el uso ideológico del mestizaje durante los años que pasó como profesor en la universidad de Stanford.

            El séptimo capítulo (y primero de la segunda parte) está dedicado al libro Para una teoría de la literatura hispanoamericana (1995), de Roberto Fernández Retamar, un autor que admira porque, junto con el uruguayo Ángel Rama, buscó la autonomía de la crítica literaria latinoamericana. Fernández Retamar, continúa Corral, escribe desde Latinoamérica y en defensa de la literatura. Su libro, en definitiva, es un ejemplo de que en Latinoamérica se escribe teoría. El capítulo ocho elogia la obra del mexicano Carlos Monsiváis, al que considera, junto con Vargas Llosa y Carlos Fuentes, lo más cercano a un intelectual público en Latinoamérica. Este cronista dedicó gran parte de su obra a la cultura popular (no a lo kitsch o folklórico, aclara el autor), pensándola siempre desde lo literario para explicar ideas sociohistóricas. Corral, que se enfoca sobre todo en el libro Aires de familia. Cultura y sociedad en América Latina (2000), admira también el hecho de que investigara los crímenes de estado en los años sesenta y setenta. El noveno capítulo está dedicado a los libros de ensayo del venezolano José Balza, a quien considera el Ciorán latinoamericano, y en especial a Espejo espeso, "una crítica literaria sobre la crítica literaria, con énfasis en este último adjetivo" (190). Corral elogia el hecho de que Balza dialogue con el "otro crítico" que no piensa como él, algo que, según el autor, brilla por su ausencia en la crítica latinoamericana actual. El décimo capítulo está dedicado al cubano Roberto González Echevarría, que, según Corral, es uno de los críticos literarios latinoamericanistas más respetados y citados en Estados Unidos después de Emir Rodríguez Monegal y Ángel Rama, y junto a Jean Franco, Jorge Riffinelli, Antonio Cornejo Polar y quizás Walter Mignolo. Se enfoca, sobre todo, en el libro Crítica práctica/práctica crítica (2002), del que elogia su clara prosa, pero condena el que enfoque su crítica en críticos cubanos sin ninguna influencia en Estados Unidos, cuando, a juicio de Corral, debería dialogar con los que están radicados en el país en que vive, Estados Unidos. Esta postura, por cierto, parece contradecir la condena, a lo largo de El error del acierto, a los latinoamericanistas radicados en Estados Unidos que siempre ignoran la teoría y la crítica producida en Latinoamérica, concentrándose únicamente en la producida en el país en que residen.

            El undécimo capítulo está dedicado a los críticos de Vargas Llosa, que a Corral le parecen decepcionantes excepto en contadas ocasiones. El capítulo se enfoca sobre todo en el libro de Raymond Williams Vargas Llosa. Otra historia de un deicidio (2001) y critica, en particular, el hecho de que no se haya estudiado lo suficiente prosa no ficticia del peruano, algo que afortunadamente se acaba de arreglar con el estudio de Juan E. de Castro Mario Vargas Llosa: Public Intellectual in Neoliberal Latin America (2011) y la colección de ensayos de Juan de Castro y Nicholas Birns Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics (2012). El duodécimo capítulo se concentra en el estudio de Jean Franco Decadencia y caída de la ciudad letrada (2003), a la que critica el no haber evolucionado desde la Guerra Fría, el lamentar constantemente el abandono de la revolución en Latinoamérica, el recoger solamente discusiones de latinoamericanistas desde Estados Unidos y el suponer "que no hay conflictos o contradicciones entre los 'Otros'" (216).

            El capítulo trece está dedicado a lo que llama biografías antidogmáticas del colombiano Rafael Humberto Moreno-Durán y en concreto a su Como el halcón peregrino. La augusta sílaba (1995). Corral lo considera uno de los grandes críticos literarios latinoamericanos y, una vez más, lamenta que la academia norteamericana no estudie a autores como él y Balza, o las crónicas de Britto García y Luis Rafael Sánchez. El penúltimo capítulo está dedicado a la controversia sobre Rigoberta Menchú y la veracidad de Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (1983). Corral critica los estudios sobre dicha controversia y lo que él considera su oportunismo: "el efecto más directo del 'affaire Menchú': la manera de venderlo y aumentar ganancias materiales e intelectuales, menos para ella" (239). Hacia el final del capítulo, el autor define los estudios culturales como "la rama más reciente de cierto romanticismo que siempre ha afectado a Occidente" (250). El capítulo que cierra el libro homenajea a su admirado Augusto Monterroso, el autor al que Corral dedicó su primer libro, mencionando especialmente al último libro que publicó: Pájaros de Hispanoamérica. El autor estudia el valor de las biografías de autores y menciona, asimismo, otra veta no explotada: los textos biográficos escritos por compañeras de autores contemporáneos.

            En definitiva, Corral insiste a lo largo del libro en que la crítica de Estados Unidos debería leer, estudiar y citar los ensayos, las crónicas y la crítica de novelistas y teóricos latinoamericanos. Recomienda, igualmente, escribir en español y con un lenguaje claro. Y sobre todo, defiende los estudios literarios y la literatura que, en su opinión, se encuentran hoy en día desprestigiados por los críticos de estudios culturales que la desdeñan por considerarla una actividad elitista y antidemocrática. Para latinoamericanizar la crítica, Corral reivindica la tradición latinoamericana y el legado de estudios culturales iniciados por autores como Pedro Henríquez Ureña y Alfonso Reyes, y continuados por Carlos Monsiváis, José Balza y Rafael Humberto Moreno-Durán. A la vez rescata los textos más marcadamente literarios de autores no hispanos como Roland Barthes y Edward Said.

 

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Review of Orientalism and Identity in Latin America: Fashioning Self and Other from the (Post)Colonial Margin. Ed. Erik Camayd-Freixas.

Orientalism and Identity in Latin America: Fashioning Self and Other from the (Post)Colonial Margin. Ed. Erik Camayd-Freixas. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2013.

To read the printed version clear here
 Chasqui 43.1 (May 2014): 195-99

Ignacio López-Calvo

University of California, Merced
Published in Chasqui (Spring 2013)

            This timely volume of essays, which analyzes the centuries-old encounter between Latin Americans and Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese cultures, adds to other recent collections that look at Orientalism in the Hispanic world. In this case, the focus is on the "the formation of Latin American constructs of the Other and the self, from colonial times to the present" (3). In the introduction to the volume, titled "The Orientalist Controversy and the Origins of Amerindian Culture," the editor, Erik Camayd-Freixas, provides an enlightening approach to Hispanic Orientalism that concomitantly provides coherence to the volume. Perhaps its most original contribution is his analysis from the perspective of the probable Asian origin of Amerindian peoples. As he points out, the connection between orientalization of both "degenerated" Asians and "primitive" Amerindians produces a continuum of exoticization and otherness. Camayd-Freixas also presents the traits that make Hispanic Orientalism different from that of other European countries. He then delves into the self-orientalization that characterizes some Latin American publications, including the Bolivian Alcides Arguedas's Pueblo enfermo (1909) and the Peruvian César Augusto Velarde's Patología indolatina. Next, the editor addresses the veneration of the Orient in Latin American literary modernismo, which, in his view, "departs from hegemonic paradigms to reconfigure the Orient in parallel with Latin America's own peripheral, uneven, and conflictive modernity" (8). Camayd-Freixas eventually comes to the conclusion that the orientalization of the Amerindian has been used as an ideological tool by Europeans, criollos, and mestizos at the expense of the first peoples themselves. He closes his introduction with a study of Octavio Paz's appropriation of Asian philosophy and culture to understand his native Mexico: "Paz's poetic quest-to return to Asia in order to arrive at America through the time bridge of dualistic thought and ideographic writing--may be considered a culmination of Hispanic Orientalism" (16).

            Brett Levinson opens the volume with the most theoretical of its essays, "The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism: Latinamericanism as a Global Praxis/Poiesis," which was originally published in 1997. Focusing on the topics of truth, silence and objectivity, he explores the contradictions present in the Latinamericanist and de-orientalist critiques of Orientalism and

Eurocentrism. In his view, the American academia's attempt to redeem the purportedly "silenced" voices in the Third World ends up reinforcing Western hegemonic concepts of truth and othering the objects of study. At the same time, it clings to a First World/Third World dichotomy that globalization has rendered obsolete: "De-orientalism stages the Other's metaphorical death or silence in order to save itself--a postcolonial discourse that perhaps should have been dissolved along with the Second World in 1989" (28). Levinson suggests that De-orientalism's exposing of the "truths" about the "Other" as well as the illusion of Western superiority is futile, as this is something that its readers likely already know as untrue. In Levinson's own words, "Latin American de-orientalism repeats Orientalism rather than critiquing it, because it ontologizes alterity and cultural difference" (21). Among the texts that he presents as examples of de-orientalism are Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation and Stephen Greenblatt's Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Levinson ends his essay by warning that De-Orientalism runs the risk of taking advantage of the Other, instead of freeing him, by capitalizing on the academic and intellectual marketplace.

            The second essay, Hernán G. H. Taboada's "The Mentality of the Reconquest and the Early Conquistadors," and the third, Christina Civantos's "Orientalism Criollo Style: Sarmiento's 'Other' and the Formation of an Argentine identity," concentrate on Arabic influences in Latin American during the colonial and independence periods. The first analyzes the Eurocentric ideological remnants of the Reconquest mentality during the Spanish Conquest of the Americas and, in particular, the association of Amerindians with Muslims that contributed to the negative orientalization of the former. Taboada provides numerous examples of analogies or identifications between Indians and Muslims made in texts by Columbus, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Motolinia, and others. In many cases, we learn, conquistadors compared their deeds to those of heroes of the Reconquest of Spain to imply that they deserved similar rewards. This Orientalist discourse, however, turned out to be ephemeral: Cortés, for instance, soon abandoned the term "mosque" to refer to Aztec edifications, calling them "temples" instead. In other cases, such as Las Casas's writings, the conquistadors are the ones compared to Moors. The Tlaxcaltecs and the Peruvian chronicler Guamán Poma de Ayala would likewise call Spaniards who mistreated them Jews and Moors. In the late seventeen-century, the Moor disappears from the Latin American imaginary and is "transmogrified into the Oriental, not because of a new real presence but because of the new dimensions he had acquired in European discourse" (42).

            Civantos's essay, taken from her 2006 Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity, looks at Sarmiento's criollo orientalism in his ambivalent comparison of Argentine gauchos with Bedouins. In particular, she studies what this comparison made in Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism and Viajes por Europa, África y América 1845-1847 meant for Argentine self-identification. When Sarmiento attempts to find tools in French-dominated Algeria to "civilize" the gaucho, the Orient suddenly acquires an important role in

Argentine national identity. As Civantos points out, however, Sarmiento often identifies ambiguously with elements of barbarism, imitating and identifying with Bedouins in a typically Orientalist fashion. Thanks to these Orientalist moments of opposition and identification, he believes to have finally understood his gaucho other and self. In Civantos's words, "he uses the figure of the Arab as a graspable counterpart to the gaucho and as part of the translation, the crafting, of the Argentine" (59).

            A second cluster of essays centers on Mexican Orientalism. Blake Seana Locklin's "Orientalism and Mexican Nationalism: Catarina de San Juan as the China Poblana's Asian Mother" studies the popular assimilation of the China Poblana costume and the Asian-born mystic Catarina de San Juan. Locklin studies this trajectory from loose woman to national symbol as well as the connections between Mexican independence, sexuality, and patriotism in portrayals of the China Poblana: "The equation of the China Poblana with Mexico will eventually lead to the sublimation of the China Poblana's sexuality into the more acceptable love of country" (66). She comes to the conclusion that "the changing roles of Catarina de San Juan reflect the dynamics of Mexican self-fashioning through the centuries" (62). As Locklin explains, the China Poblana ends up being embodied in her clothing, the standardized national costume. When Catarina de San Juan is linked to her through legend, the former becomes more sexualized and the latter from respectable. Ironically, Locklin adds, "the same type of proyecto nacionalista that adopts Catarina de San Juan as the foremother of the China Poblana excludes Chinese immigrants" (74). In other words, Chinese in Mexico never benefited from Catarina's fame as a virtuous and saintly woman.

            In turn, Julia María Schiavone Camacho's "Journeys and Trials of the Fu Family: Transpacific Reverberations of the Anti-Chinese Movement in Mexico," which draws from her 2012 book Chinese Mexicans: Transpacific Migration and the Search for a Homeland, 1910-1960, reveals the trial of Chinese immigrants during the 1930s anti-Chinese movement, focusing in particular on one Chinese Mexican family as a microcosm of its community. The essay begins with the story of Fu Gui, who migrated from Guangdong Province to Sonora around the turn of the century. He married a Mexican woman who would later die partly as a result of the stress produced by the viciousness of the anti-Chinese movement. Sonoran officials deported the widower and his seven young children to the U.S., where they were soon deported to Macau. Schiavone summarizes anti-Chinese campaigns and exclusionary policies in different Mexican states, especially in Sonora during the Mexican Revolution. As she explains, "anti-Chinese sentiment was neither widespread nor organized in Sonora until the revolutionary era" (82). Economic competition and anxiety over the gender imbalance (most Chinese were men) fueled these sentiments. The new discourse of mestizaje and the indigenismo of the revolutionaries never benefited blacks or Asians in Mexico. In fact, beginning in 1931, Sonora and Sinaloa carried out mass expulsions of Chinese until their population declined dramatically. Their Mexican wives were also considered Chinese refugees in the U.S. and deported to China, where they congregated in Portuguese Macau: "Mexican women would fall deeper into the interstices of the nation-state once they reached China, where in some cases Chinese men's previous marriages removed the possibility that local authorities would consider them Chinese citizens either" (87). President Lázaro Cárdenas began a repatriation program of these women, leaving their husbands behind. Schiavone ends the article by describing the Fu family's futile efforts to reunite in Mexico and by stating that "The anti-Chinese movement and its mass expulsions have yet to be assimilated into the Mexican national psyche" (91).

            The third cluster of essays concentrates on Latin American Orientalist poetry. Ivan A. Schulman devotes his "Narrating Orientalisms in Spanish American Modernism," which was previously published in 2004, to the Modernista cult of the Orient during the years 1880 and 1930. He questions previous critical positions, claiming that this interest in the Orient should not only be conceived as an intertextual phenomenon but also as a social one, since Chinese and Japanese plastic arts were as influential in creating the Latin American Oriental discourse as literary texts: "the engendering sources of Modernist Orientalisms were the written word of literary texts and art criticism (principally French), paintings, and the decorative arts. And while exoticism stands out as the sharper of their discursive modalities, it should not be taken at face value" (105). Among the authors reviewed are José Martí, Efrén Rebolledo, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Rubén Darío, Julio Herrera y Reissig, Julián del Casal, and José Juan Tablada.

            Along these lines, Zoila Clark's "Enrique Gómez Carrillo's Japan and Latin American (Peripheral) Orientalism" revisits, from the perspective of Said's and Bhabha's theories, the Guatemalan modernista Enrique Gómez Carrillo's travel narratives about Japan El alma japonesa (1907) and El Japón heroico y elegante (1912). In her view, "these chronicles may have actually set out to prove that tradition had survived in Japan despite the rapid modernization it underwent during this early globalizing period. Latin American countries were at a similar juncture: trying to consolidate their postcolonial identity after independence, while at the same time finding themselves immersed in the mercantilist progress of the United States" (112). , Therefore, having beaten Russia at war, Japan is presented as a model that gives hope to Latin America. Gómez Carrillo's approach, argues Clark, is one of veneration and respect, rather than being hegemonic or imperialistic; the Guatemalan even identifies with the Japanese, calling them brothers.

            The editor, Camayd-Freixas, also contributes to this section with an essay titled "The Tao of Mexican Poetry: Tablada, Villaurrutia, Paz," where he reveals Mexican avant-garde poets' use of Eastern thought and the Japanese haiku. He argues that "Underlying the modernista creed was a rejection of Western rationality" (120) and that their use of synestesia is actually related to Eastern mysticism. In his late period, Tablada introduced and adapted the haikai into the Spanish language in a lighthearted way. Villaurrutia, instead, "internalized, digested, and transformed influences into a deeply personal style" (124), adopting the haikai in a more grave way and departing from the Japanese strict metrical form. And, as announced in the introduction, Paz used these forms of Eastern culture to reconstruct poetically the lost high culture of Mexican indigenous peoples. He tried to "construct modern Mexican sensibility as that 'other pole' of the Eastern world'" (135).

            The forth cluster of essays examines the Chinese diaspora in Cuba and Panama. Rogelio Rodríguez Coronel's "The Dragon's Footprints along Cuban Narrative," originally published in Spanish in 2002, deals with the presence of the Chinese in Cuban literature and culture, addressing works by Severo Sarduy, Ramón Meza, Regino Pedroso, Wifredo Lam, José Martí, Hernández Catá, and Lezama Lima. In turn, Kathleen López's "Renace el sueño: Remaking Havana's Barrio Chino" analyzes the Cuban government's sponsorship of the rehabilitation of Havana's Chinatown and the annual festival of overseas Chinese, as it influences the formation of a Chinese Cuban identity. Unfortunately, she explains, these projects organized by "mixed" descendants of Chinese have left the aging native Chinese--who are actually commodified as part of the tourist circuit--as mere observers. López studies the history of Havana's barrio chino and of the revitalization project. Because it coincided with the government's efforts in promoting international tourism, it has been criticized in Cuba as being more of an economic than a cultural enterprise. As to the Chinese descendents, López argues that "Even third-generation descendents of Chinese in Cuba have created imaginative ties to an ancestral homeland" (166). Some are taking advantage of the economic opportunities created by this project, and redefining themselves as a result. In contrast, native Chinese have only seen incidental economic benefit. In her own words, "While it has not attracted new Chinese immigrants, the revival has created economic and cultural pull factors to draw descendants who may have had little prior Chinese identity. It has also enabled connections between native Chinese and descendants" (169).

            Margarita Vásquez studies, in "Of Chinese Dragons and Canaries on the Istmus of Panama," the Chinese presence in Panamanian literature as well as Sino-Panamanian cultural production, focusing on the struggle to preserve a collective memory. Among the Panamanian novelists mentioned are Yolanda Camarano de Sucre, José Franco, Luis Pulido Ritter, and Juan David Morgan. Vásquez analyzes short stories by Rosa María Britton, Enrique Jaramillo Levi, and Rogelio Sinán. The essay also mentions Sino-Panamanian authors such as Raúl Wong, Carlos Francisco Changmarín, Antonio Wong, , Enrique Chuez, Carlos Wong, Lis Wong Vega, and Gloria Young, analyzing only works by Eustorgio Chong Ruiz and César Young Núñez.  

            The final group of essays explores Asian migration in contemporary South America. Debra Lee-Distefano's "Siu Kam Wen and the Subjectification of Chinese Peruvians in 'El tramo final'" provides an overview of Chinese migration to Peru and an analysis of Siu Kam Wen short story "El tramo final," which shows the transnational experience and the inner workings of Lima's Chinese and Tusán community, as just one example of the Asian Latin American experience. In Lee-Distefano's view, the author rewrites the Peruvian experience, representing an overlooked part of its society: "Siu displaces the focus away from the dominant culture, objectifying it, while subjectifying the characters" (197). Cristina Rocha's "Zen in Brazil: Cannibalizing Oriental Flows," adapted from her 2006 book Zen in Brazil: The Quest for Cosmopolitan Modernity, documents the reception of Japanese Zen Buddhism in Brazil in contrast with how Japanese Brazilians understand it. As Rocha explains, European (mostly Parisian) ideas of Orientalism, rather than the Japanese Brazilian community, were the ones that impacted the Brazilian cultural elite's understanding of Zen, Buddhism, and Japan. The reason for this paradox is that Japanese immigrants were not seen as legitimate carriers of this heritage: their manual labor carried a low social status and prestige. This is evident in the numerous French terms used in reviews of Japanese-themed operas. The haiku and zen were two of the most influential Japanese cultural forms in Brazil. Yet, although Japanese immigrants have written haikus from the inception of the immigration waves and often half of their local newspaper was devoted to poetry, the most visible Brazilian haiku writers are not of Japanese origin. Zen, which provided cultural capital and prestige to the Brazilian cultural elite, was also creolized. The article closes by pointing out that Zen is taught to new generations of Brazilians in a different way from how Nippo-Brazilians practice it. For instance, the latter no longer feel the need to sit on the floor; instead, they see devotion to ancestors as a priority. As Rocha points out, "This Western construct of Zen and Buddhism in general, which is strongly inflected by Orientalism, is so pervasive in the West that conflicts have sprung up in many Western countries between immigrants and converts on the issue of what constitutes authentic Buddhist practice" (214). Karen Tei Yamashita's "Writing and Memory: Images of the Japanese Diaspora in Brazil," which includes a second epilogue to her novel on Japanese immigration to Brazil Brazil-Maru, closes the volume with an autobiographical account of her interest in the Japanese presence in Brazil. The volume ends with the bibliography, notes about the contributors, and an index.

            Overall, with a chronological organization from north to south, Orientalism and Identity in Latin America: Fashioning Self and Other from the (Post)Colonial Margin offers an excellent overview of the study of Orientalism in Latin America, including the study of works by Asian Latin Americans. Perhaps the only flaw is that several of the essays included were previously published elsewhere, some of them over a decade earlier, which has the inconvenient of missing the dialogue with recent scholarship on the same topics. In any case, it is undoubtedly a key volume to understand the development of studies on Latin American Orientalism and Asian Latin American cultural production in recent years.

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