All My Relatives: Community in Contemporary Ethnic American Literatures by Bonnie TuSmith (review)

Reviews 111 This volume is a readable contribution to contemporary literary theory, and an important collection of analyses of Native American literature. SCOTT R. CHRISTIANSON Radford University AllMyRelatives: Community in ContemporaryEthnicAmericanLiteratures. ByBonnie TuSmith. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. 216 pages, $34.50.) About a decade ago, sociologist Robert Bellah and his associates claimed that Americans have lost the language for expressing communal values. In this ambitious and insightful book, however, Bonnie TuSmith asserts that in the works of ethnic American writers the vision of community is very much alive. Four main chapters deal with the four broad ethnic American groups— Asian American, African American, Native American, and Chicano/a. For each of these groups, TuSmith examines two major writers, one male and one female, whose works appeared after the civil rights movement and who have consciously drawn from their ethnic backgrounds: Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston,John Edgar Wideman and Alice Walker, N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, Tomás Rivera and Sandra Cisneros. In most cases, the synopses are too brief to help those who are unfamiliar with the works under discussion. And the author rarely deals with such relevant questions as “What do these texts suggest about the community or communities outside their own?”and “How are their visions of their own ethnic communities affected by their attitudes towards the American community as a whole?” TuSmith nonetheless accomplishes important things with this book. Filled with cultural and socio-historical insights, her readings successfully refute ear­ lier misreadings by those who interpreted and evaluated the works from Eurocentric perspectives. Her analysis of the linguistic patterns in each work is exceptionally brilliant. More significant, her courage to cross cultures is inspir­ ing: a first-generation Chinese American who grew up partly in polyracial Manhattan and who teaches multi-ethnic literature at Bowling Green State University, TuSmith has done a pioneering work in exploring the relationships and connections among various ethnic American literatures. SEIWOONG OH Rider College The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane. By William Holtz. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. 425 pages, $29.95.) This is a thorough and readable biography of a significant figure in twentieth -century western U. S. literature. Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968), after a ...