Reviews for Ethnic Modernisms

The average rating for Ethnic Modernisms based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-11-25 00:00:00 Richard Johnson "Only as we come to view all ethnicity as linked to migration and, vice versa, all migration linked to forms of ethnicity, do we begin to understand that so-called native cultures are in fact always already construed and open to demographic regrouping and cultural reconstitution at any point in history. To paraphrase Adorno, we begin to realize that no one is rightfully at home" (Konzett5). This book opens with a reading of dislocation and exile in Henry James's American Scene in relation to his anxieties about immigration. The book aims not to examine ethnicity and modernism in writers like James, but to read Yezierska, Hurston, and Rhys. As the title suggests, Konzett is concerned with an "aesthetics of dislocation" which she believes emerges through the langauge choices of the writers (such as Yezierska's blending of English and Yiddish). She explains that she chose writers whose texts and receptions were contradictory and complex to prevent a reductionist reading of ethnicity and modernism.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-31 00:00:00 Tara Sutherland This would be a good intro for someone who knew nothing about cyberpunk and its greater context in postmodern literature. However, I had read most of the fiction here before, and the nonfiction essays tended to be a bit beyond me. The book as a whole tends toward the dry and academic and, while you don't need a graduate degree in postmodern literature to follow all the references, I expect it would help. I enjoyed learning a few new tidbits about the predecessors and influences of cyberpunk, and I did discover a few new authors to add to my reading list. The best thing in this collection is the interview with William Gibson, in which he explains his relationship to technology and why the fact that he doesn't know much about computers isn't actually relevant to his stories.