Writing Outside the Nation by Azade Seyhan (review)

Reviews Azade Seyhan. Writing Outside the Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 189p. Heike Henderson Boise State University This beautifully written analysis oftransnational poetics is a narrative about narratives . It is an investigation ofliterary fiction and theory, ofstories and histories. Seyhan uses various theoretical approaches to illuminate literary works by some of the best known bicultural writers of the United States and Germany, and she uses literary analysis to illuminate contemporary theories ofexile, hybridiry, and interlinguality. Her readings of literary texts by, among others, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, Rafik Schami, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar are sound and convincing. Above all it is, however, Seyhan's ability to move effortlessly between informed theoretical reflection and concrete literary analysis which makes this book such a treat foranybody interested in transnational literatures and dieories. Seyhan's investigation is based on die observation that some ofthe most interesting and innovative artists write in a language different from the one they were born into. The United States and Germany are both destinations of choice for large and heterogeneous populations ofexiles and immigrants. As such, they host a wide variety oftransnational writers whose mastery oftheir literary languages is not the result ofcolonial experience, but ofmigration and resettlement. Especially the German public, however, still does not regard these writings as an integral part ofthe national culture. Seyhan now investigates the conditions and consequences of nonnative writers occupying the domain of national language. After an extended introduction that establishes the conceptual framework of her study, Seyhan synthesizes theoretical insights into cultural displacement, memory, and language and reads them against literary texts by Rafik Schami, Edwidge Danticat, and Rosario Ferré. She then discusses autobiographical fictions and cultural autobiographies by Oscar Hijuelos, Maxine Hong Kingston, Eva Hoffman, and Libuse Moníková, once again reading literature through the lens of theory and vice versa. The second and most thorough part ofSeyhan's book is a comparative study of contemporary Chicano/a and Turkish-German literary productions. These literary texts are not analyzed in terms ofsimilarity and contrast; Seyhan rather gives a juxtaposed reading by reflecting one through the other. Seyhan analyses how history and memory, geography, and genealogy inhibit language, and she gives a critical perspective on how and why women's bodies are so intricately linked with text, language, and politics. In her readings ofliterary texts by Gloria Anzaldúa, FALL 2001 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + 125 Ana Castillo, Aysel özakin, and Emine Sevgi özdamar, Seyhan draws on theoretical concepts of borderland writing developed by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Angie Chabram Dernersesian, and others. She also employs dieories ofmemory, especially by Jacques Le Goff, and evaluates forms of remembering diat extend beyond individual experience. Seyhan contends that both Turkish-German and Chicano/a authors actively rewrite cultural heritages. Their best and most experimental texts frequently employ code mixing, code selection, and code switching. Seyhan analyzes how language functions as speech and script, as language game and everyday practice. She points out the salient features ofselect texts, and she gives much needed cultural and historical background information. Instead ofcritiquing less interestingwriters and theirwork, Seyhan focuses on the most accomplished writers. A common feature of all die literary works discussed is that they are creative, experimental, self-reflexive, and dieoretical. All ofthese writers expect the reader to engage in a more informed way widi another discursive pracrice and, consequently, Seyhan argues for a cultural multilingualism that includes, but also extends beyond the purely linguistic aspects. In her afterword "Pedagogical Gains," Seyhan considers the implications for teaching. She argues that transnational narratives foster an awareness of power structures and value systems and fill in die gaps ofour understanding ofa culturally complex world. True to her conviction that literature illuminates theory and vice versa, she suggests reading Foucault next to Anzaldúa or özdamar, and outlines a study ofcultural memory through literaryand autobiographical texts.These practical applications, although not yet fully developed, attempt to provide a link between research and teaching which, unfortunately, so often is missing from scholarship. By investigating transnational literature written in Germany and die United States simultaneously, Seyhan combines areas ofscholarship that, despite the opportunities for mutual gain, more often than not remain separate. Even the...