English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas Book

These "Notes" are actually very well-researched and argued essays on the state of race and culture in the United States. The book pivots on Fusco's own personal experiences -- in one of the more memorable chunks I read for a graduate seminar, she describes the performance art project she undertook the year the 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" was celebrated, in which she traveled the world in a golden cage, posing as a member of a newly discovered primal race (the audience responses are mortifying) -- but they read as surprisingly undated capsules of the contradictions majority culture necessarily imposes upon minority culture. Lots of talk here of racism, stereotyping, white supremacy and the limitations of "multiculturalism" as it was practiced in the early 1990s. I hope I'll have the chance to read the book in full -- sometime after the snarling upcoming Master's qualifying exam...