Running in the Family, and: Family Installments: Memories of Growing up Hispanic, and: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, and: Aké: The Years of Childhood (review)

148 the minnesota review Juan Bruce-Novoa's Chkano Poetry: A Response to Chaos similarly discusses the manner in which—according to his analysis—our poets "rescue" those "objects" which they perceive as threatened by symbolically replacing them with their newly created artworks. Presented as "the first book-length critical study of Chicano poetry," this work is indeed the first of its kind. It will be recognized as an important step in the serious study of Chicano poetic expression, even though it is mainly an extension of the ideas Novoa proposed as far back as 1974-75 in his articles "The Space of Chicano Literature" and "Literatura chicana: La respuesta al caos," the latter being "a slightly different version in Spanish" of the English original. He admits this fact himself when he apologetically reminds us in his preface that "Hunter S. Thompson warns that a writer should start to worry when she or he begins to auto-plagiarize." Novoa also reminds us that in 1974 he called for many approaches to Chicano literature, and he reiterates this eclectic posture almost a decade later: "Chicano criticism should be a dynamic interplay of many readings, none of which can presume to be absolute." Although he thus claims no preemptive rights for his readings, as some critics have for theirs, he does seem to have developed an a priori formula and then to have molded to it the works of a dozen of the more recognized contemporary Chicano poets. In order to develop his methodology, Novoa utilizes a series ofterms normally associated with transformational grammar ("surface structure," "deep structure," "chosen elements," "underlying string," etc.) and still others borrowed from Mircea Eliade's propositions ("axis mundi"). He calls his analytical framework a "paradigmatic model. " It is a reductionist formula inasmuch as it is founded on a single basic antinomy: "life versus death—Eros versus Thanatos" (p. 5). Novoa proposes that his paradigmatic model could also be termed an "elegiac model," since much of Chicano literature deals with the death or disappearance of somebody or something while also seeking to transcend the loss by affirming a presence through the newly created image that the poem itself, or other work of art, constitutes. Departing from the cultural-nationalist outlooks which characterized the 1960"s, Novoa situates himself among the group of critics who attempt to insert Chicano literature into a more "cosmopolitan" mainstream. To do so, they attempt to apply established models of criticism—mainly European and North American—to the analysis of Chicano narrative and poetry and, in so doing, they set out to identify "universal" themes and values in these works. Accordingly, aside from the influences pointed out above, Novoa pays tribute to Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Mircea Eliade, Juan Garcia Ponce, and Octavio Paz, as the authors whose ideas have guided his readings from the beginning. Novoa's controversial work will undoubtedly provoke—indeed, has already begun to provoke—interesting reactions in Chicano literary circles. LAURO FLORES Michael Ondaatje. Running in the Family. New York: Norton, 1982. 207 pp. $12.95 (cloth). Edward Rivera. Family Installments: Memories of Growing up Hispanic. New York: William Morrow, 1982. 299 pp. $14.50 (cloth). Richard Rodriguez. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. Boston: David R. Godine, 1982. 195 pp. $13.95 (cloth). WoIe Soyinka. Aké: The Years ofChildhood. New York: Random House, 1981. 230 pp. $14.95 (cloth). Any act of self-presentation produces an epistemological ambivalence. How the writer works out this ambivalence determines both the aesthetic and the aesthetic value of his/her narrative. However, there are circumstances in which this "working out" may be controlled reviews 149 by a series of material and ideological factors. This is the case for the "ethnic" writer who must respond to conflicting injunctions in the present socioaesthetic climate. On the one hand, "be authentic," that is, be truly "representative" of your ethnicity; on the other, "be a good writer," that is, do not fall into the trap of the "representative fallacy." Contemporary critics, especially those on the Left who recognize the need to include marginalized groups in discussions ofculture and literature, often adopt a double standard. For example, Fredric Jameson is capable of including the...