This is a brilliant book that examines the fiction and non-fiction writings of Américo Paredes, a native Texan who achieved international acclaim for his transdisciplinary and cross-border scholarship. In this innovative book, Ramón Saldívar meticulously mines through Paredes’ published work to expound upon the significance and contributions of this distinguished scholar. Saldívar persuasively argues that Paredes was a pioneer border intellectual whose journalistic and prose writing from the 1930s and 40s laid the theoretical foundation for his later work as a folklorist and ethnographer and established its political and aesthetic base. Specifically, by skillfully demonstrating how Paredes drew on his lived experiences as well as his multiple identities as a poet, musician, journalist, and writer to negotiate the tensions and inconsistencies between the national and transnational forces at work in the Americas, Saldívar establishes Paredes as a precursor to the “new” American Cultural Studies.
Saldívar’s book is an exceptionally welcome addition to the scholarship on Paredes for several reasons. First, drawing on extended interviews that Saldívar conducted with Paredes, in Chapter Two, the author allows the reader an opportunity to “hear” Paredes’ voice and to read his perspective on various topics. Saldívar does a magnificent job of capturing Paredes’ personality and wit, making for a very poignant chapter particularly for those of us who had the privilege of knowing Paredes personally.
Another innovative aspect of Saldívar’s work is his detailed attention to the newspaper reports and columns that Paredes wrote in the 30s and 40s. As far as I know, Saldívar’s is the first thorough study of Paredes’ journalistic writings. While based in Japan and China, Paredes wrote for the U.S. military newspaper Pacific Stars and Stripes and for El Universal, a Mexico City daily. These writings demonstrate that Paredes’ lived experiences in Asia deeply impacted him and stimulated a critical, transnational way of thinking. These writings also show Paredes’ concern for human rights and his ability to raise sensitive issues about gender, political and cultural identity, nationalism, and citizenship.
Equally noteworthy is Saldívar’s assessment of Paredes’ scholarly contributions to folkloristics. Although Paredes’ work on folklore is not the central focus of the book, Saldívar provides a most succinct and clear articulation of Paredes’ theoretical and methodological approaches to folklore in the introduction that should prove extremely useful to the non-specialist. Saldívar makes reference to and elaborates upon Paredes’ folkloristic contributions in subsequent chapters of the book in order to show the ways in which they reflect and advance Paredes’ ideas. Importantly, Saldívar’s command of cultural theory allows him to situate Paredes’ work by comparing him to important cultural theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Mikhail Bakhtin.
Beautifully crafted, thoroughly researched, and well documented, this is a remarkable and important book that will no doubt become a landmark volume in the fields of American Studies, Ethnic Studies, English, Chicano Studies, Folkloristics, Borderland Studies, and Transnational Studies. The reader can look forward to learning a great deal about Américo Paredes, the man, the artist, the writer, and scholar. Saldívar deserves much praise for this extraordinarily nuanced and comprehensive study.
--------
[Review length: 507 words • Review posted on October 3, 2006]