José Can You See? Latinos On and Off Broadway by Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez (review)

One article that stands out is Johannes F. Evelein's piece on spatial aesthetics in three of Frischmuth's radio plays. He introduces a part of Frischmuth's œuvre which has not been dealt up to this point and approaches it from a fascinating perspective. Focusing on three radio plays, he examines the ways in which space, language, and identity are inter-connected. Although his analysis ofthe first play Die unbekannte Hand seems superficial and somewhat forced, his discussion of spatial identities opens up a new way to approach Frischmuth's work. One certainly hopes that Evelein pursues this fascinating line of thinking further. Editing such a volume is no doubt an Amazonian task. Trying to find the successful balance is a particular challenge. Introducing a writer to a wider audience while presenting articles ofinterest to experts in the area is indeed almost impossible . Although the volume falls short of this goal, selective readers will find articles of interest. %? Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez.José Can You See?Latinos On and OffBroadway . Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1999. 275p. Victoria Ramirez Weber State University The title ofAlberto Sandoval-Sanchez's engaging book on Latino theater does more than announce its general contents. The author explains that "José can you see?" is a conflation of "No way, José" and the first line of our national anthem. The juxtaposition ofthis unanswerable challenge or "implied command" to José as non-Anglo other, invoked to "see/embrace" America's dominant culture, sets the socio-political perspective ofSandoval-Sanchez's work. He makes clear that his exploration of Latino theater takes place within the context of a revision of Broadway and Hollywood's negative stereotyping of ethnicity and otherness. For the author, revision is no mere theoretical reflex but rather one ofthe keys to Latino cultural survival. Thus, Sandoval-Sanchez begins his journey by pausing to re-examine Anglo-American Broadway theater in its treatment of"Latinidad" from a Latino perspective, before offering an historical survey ofUS Latino/a theater with its various trends, key productions, and pressing issues within a clearly diverse US Latino population. As a native Puerto Rican now living and teaching in die US, Sandoval-Sanchez is well aware of theater's ability to create, perpetuate, and disseminate negative images ofLatino ethnicity through the powerful visual imagery central to theater and film. By invoking the careers ofCarmen Miranda and Desi Arnaz, SandovalSanchez unfolds a socio-political backdrop ofUS/Latin American relations char132 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + FALL 2000 acterized by paternalism, and Anglo re-presenting ofLatino culture as exoticized and/or feminized. Miranda as caricature of the "Brazilian Bombshell" and Arnaz as "Latin Lover" signify a reductionism calculated to make their "Latinness" palatable to mainstream American audiences. The author's disclosure ofhow Anglo culture limits and thereby controls the identity ofthese non-Anglo emigrant performers sets the stage for his subsequent critique of WestSideStory, while his assertion that Miranda and Arnaz are ultimately able to transcend/resist the stereotypes that their popularity fosters is both provocative and questionable. Sandoval-Sanchez's chapter on WestSideStorywill intrigue many readers as rhe play, and later the film, are widely known and loved by American audiences. He asserts that the play/film offers a surface love story masking a subtext that is "an explicit discourse of discrimination and racial prejudices toward immigrant Latinos/as," but this precludes the possibility ofviewers, including Anglo ones, reading this dramatization of race relations against the grain. Does the play, and more ubiquitously, the film, depict only the Puerto Rican Sharks as menacing and criminal, or does it paint theJets as the same, and the latter's obsession with maintaining their turf (read "power") the cause of the ensuing violence? Is the song "America" meant to inferiorize Puerto Rico/cans, or do the lyrics reveal the emigrants ' wrenching ambiguity towards the idea of "home," their rooftop singing and dancing signifying a moment of celebration but also of irony, dignity, and poverty in their adopted land a sardonic and, as we know, lethal mix? Readers may question the author's interpretation ofthe Sharks' portrayal in addition to that of Maria, but this does not detract from Sandoval-Sanchez's larger probing ofhow Puerto Rican gang...