anecdotes on the most prolific songwriters are effectively spreadthroughout their multiple entries.

The greatest contribution of Furia and Lasser to the study ofAmerican popular song is their analysis of songwriting, especially lyricwriting. Their presentation of the stories behind these songs iseloquent, but their consideration of the stories in terms of culturalor historical relevance is limited. The authors’ observations, on theother hand, are equally eloquent in their presentation and also offerthought-provoking insight into the enduring popular appeal of thesesongs.

Ann OmmenOhio State University

Trailing Clouds: Immigrant Fiction in Contemporary America. DavidCowart. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

Defying the tendency of much scholarship on immigrant literatureto foreground the politics of race, ethnicity, and postcolonial theory,David Cowart argues that immigrant writers in post-1970 Americarecuperate the promise and ideals of an America that has beenimperiled by identity politics. Although he acknowledges that‘‘ethnicity has become chic in the marketplace’’ (71), Cowart doesnot group writers by ethnicity or national origins, for according tohim, American culture is moving away from its Eurocentric bias tofoster appreciation of the multivalenced people ‘‘we’’ are becoming.Through an examination of a popular cultural form, Cowart’s aim is toshow that for new immigrants the American myth or metanarrative ofinclusivity is valid.

Immigrants, Cowart claims, undergo a painful parturition asinfantilized citizens of a new country. Successful transition frominfantilism to adulthood is thus a fitting metaphor for the process ofAmericanization. Remembering a better life from whence they came,they arrive, like Wordsworth’s infant, ‘‘trailing clouds of glory’’ orunder that cloud if fleeing some sort of crime or dereliction (5).For Cowart the process of Americanization is thus evolutionary ratherthan marginalizing. He contends that new popular narratives from‘‘elsewhere-oppressed’’ (209) writers indicts those who critique America

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for various forms of racist or colonial exploitation. Bharati Mukerjee’s1989 novel Jasmine, for instance, emblematizes Cowart’s contentionthat America is open to newcomers. Jasmine, an Indian immigrantlike Mukerjee herself, is not victimized or marginalized by Americaand acculturation. Rather, for her, Americanization figures asempowerment, and in turn her identity is one of tactical negotiationor hybrid reconstitution. The various lifestyles she embraces along withthe numerous names she has throughout the novel—Jyoti, Jasmine,Jazz, Jassy, Jase, Jane, and the Hindu goddess Kali—reflect her‘‘enabling fluidity of self’’ (11), her alacrity to change and adapt in hernew country. The fluidity of identity Mukerjee delineates in her novel,Cowart contends, is the prototype of the new immigrant in literature,and is reflective of the new America, which facilitates alchemic identitywith its openness. ‘‘As immigrants become Americans, in other words,America itself is made over in the immigrants’ likeness. The same goesfor the much-maligned figure of the ‘melting pot,’ from which mustissue not sameness but perennially new and different alloys of nationalidentity’’ (73).

Cowart directly acknowledges his tendentiousness in the conclusionof the book—politically conservative, he is opposed to ‘‘absolutistcultural critique that neglects to historicize the nation’s occasionalfailures to live up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration ofIndependence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the body of civilrights legislation that made explicit what was always implicit in thosedocuments’’ (209). For Cowart, ‘‘immigrant desire, in its most currentform proves, once again, that America remains, first and last, ‘thecountry . . . of the universally displaced’ ’’ (210).

Cowart’s breadth of literary knowledge is impressive: throughoutthe book he compares immigrant authors such as Bellow, Mukerjee,Hegi, Danticat, Cao, and Kincaid to Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dostoevsky,Faulkner, and other literary giants with thorough, in-depth analysis ofeach text addressed. To support his revisionist readings of immigrantnarrative he also employs a variety of theoretical methodologies suchas Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, deconstruction, semiotics,historiography, and DuBois’ paradigm of ‘‘double consciousness.’’While many may disagree with Cowart’s outright rejection of thelegitimacy of identity politics and with his contention that theAmerican ideals of freedom, equality, and inclusivity are alive and welland evidenced in current immigrant literature, this text is essential to

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any scholar of popular literature and of immigrant studies because ofits impressive scope of comparative literary analysis, and because ofCowart’s meticulously constructed argument.

Leah PerryGeorge Mason University

The Latin American Fashion Reader. Ed. Regina A. Root. NewYork: Berg, 2005.

The lights dim, a hush falls over the crowd, and one by one themodels enter the runway. But this is unlike any fashion show we haveever seen before. It features such diverse styles as the Mexican ChinaPoblana, the Argentine peineton, the pollera skirt, the Argentine poncho,and the Guayabera shirt. No, this is not an ordinary fashion show—it isthe latest fashion scholarship published by Berg publishers. LatinAmerican Fashion Reader provides a lively and provocative look atpopular culture in region through the lens of style and dress.

Regina Root, who teaches Hispanic Studies at the College ofWilliam and Mary, has compiled a diverse collection of essays thatprovide thorough temporal and geographic coverage of the role offashion in Latin America. Because this volume offers such a variedapproach, one walks away with a clear message that there is not a senseof homogeneity across the region with respect to fashion. But acommon thread does run throughout the essays: that fashion is closelytied to identity and that trends in dress and style are varied andfluid.

The seventeen chapters are divided into five sections. Part one,‘‘Unraveling History,’’ is undoubtedly the strongest. It provides ahistorical overview of select fashion trends in regions such as Argentinaand Mexico. The first chapter sets the historical backdrop for clothingand fashion as an identifier in Latin America. Regina Root also offers adelightful analysis of imposing women’s headwear in nineteenth-century Argentina, arguing that the enormous tortoiseshell peinetonbecame a way for Argentine women to pursue social independence bycommanding the physical space above and around their bodies. Otherchapters offer a glimpse of the impact of foreign influence in LatinAmerican fashions.

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