The Cambridge companion to transnational American literature /

Goyal (English and African American studies, UCLA) brings together 16 essays that are alternately satisfying and frustrating. Her contribution (apart from the introduction), "The Transnational Turn and Postcolonial Studies," is deeply thoughtful, rich in examples, indeed exemplary. It will be taught in advanced courses on postcolonialism, diaspora studies, American imperialism, and, perhaps, what the social sciences call "transnationalism." The essays by David James, Wai Chee Dimock, Shelley Fishkin, and John Cutler can be read profitably. Some of the other essays are predictable but poorly focused; they neither develop an informed, well-theorized notion of the transnational nor deliver an account of a specific phenomenon that is demonstrably inflected by--or inflects--a definable transnationalism. Despite the fact that some essays are marked by a dearth of disciplined conceptualization and by inadequate knowledge of transnationalism, the book matters because the links between capitalism, imperialism, diasporas, and transnationalism, on the one hand, and literature, race, and gender, on the other, are not yet properly understood and consolidated into a strong theoretical frame. Both the virtues and faults of this book clarify what remains to be done. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Khachig Tololyan, Wesleyan University