Dance between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States (review)

Dance between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States, by William Luis. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 1997. xxii + 353 pp. ISBN 0-8265-1302-6 cloth.

The United States today is "truly a postcolonial and postmodern nation" (290). So William Luis concludes in this groundbreaking study of identity formation and transformation, focusing on literature written by Americans of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican descent. The "dance" of his title evokes the interaction of North American culture with that of Latinos, those with Latin American roots who were born and raised in the United States and are predominantly English-speaking, according to the author (in contrast wit h "Hispanics," more recent Spanish-speaking immigrants). After an opening chapter , "Setting New Roots," which briefly surveys the literature, Dance between Two Cultures turns to the Puerto Rican poets and autobiographers of New York. The author, raised in the city's Lower East Side, is adept at setting the scene. A discussion of the Young Lords Organization, a Puerto Rican activist organization once allied with the Black Panthers, provides an intriguing context for the work of Pedro Petri, whose poetry was instrumental in the formation of Nuyorican identity. Luis suggests that the literature emerging from this community has characteristically been concerned with the demanding experience of Puerto Ricans in the city itself, and with the reshaping of identity; Miguel Piñero, for instance, "recognizes that he is part of the environment [. . .]. Puerto Rico and island culture are not even a remote memory" (59). In contrast, the writing of Cuban-Americans frequently harkens back to their Caribbean homeland, although an interesting gender distinction between female and male poets, especially in the way they feel about the island's past, is clearly suggested. Female Cuban-American writers seemed to be more ready to immerse themselves in new currents, and to abandon old attitudes; in her novel Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina García transcends the familiar moral binaries of the Cuban-American community in a complex search for dreams, aspirations, and identity.

The central metaphor of this book perhaps deserves further debate. Luis notes that "North Americans do not differentiate between Hispanic Caribbean groups" (269): so does the dance of Latinos and Anglos really involve just two partners? The image also appears optimistic, considering the degree of tension between the two sets of culture; Luis himself draws attention to the life and violent crimes of the Puerto Rican autobiographer Piri Thomas. This optimism is nevertheless understandable in view of the author's wish to integrate Latino-Caribbean literature into the cultural and intellectual canon.

This is in many respects an activist book: a challenge to colonialist discourse within the United States, and a conscious stimulus to change in academic course offerings. Luis celebrates the mambo-ization of America, that kind of cultural symbiosis which leads literally to new and adapted dance forms, and which receives literary expression in works like Oscar Hijuelos's The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. He clearly does not intend to have the last word. Of Ricardo Pau Llosa' s "The Beauty of Treason," he says : "My reading of the poem is at best problematic" (163). But his book is definitely a first step in a new and exciting dance.

Benita Sampedro

 

Benita Sampedro is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Hofstra University (Hempstead, New York), specializing in colonial Spanish American literature.

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