Preface: Americanity Otherwise  ix

Acknowledgments  xxix

1. Unsettling Race, Coloniality, and Caste in Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera, Martínez's Parrot in the Oven, and Roy's The God of Small Things  1

2. Migratory Locations: Subaltern Modernity and José Martí's Trans-American Cultural Criticism  31

3. Looking Awry at the War of 1898: Theodore Roosevelt versus Miguel Barnet and Esteban Montejo  57

4. In Search of the "Mexican Elvis": Border Matters, Americanity, and Post–State-centric Thinking  75

5. Making U.S. Democracy Surreal: Political Race, Transmodern Realism, and the Miner's Canary  90

6. The Outernational Origins of Chicano/a Literature: Paredes's Asian-Pacific Routes and Hinojosa's Cuban Casa de las Américas Roots  123

7. Transnationalism Contested: On Sandra Cisnero's The House on Mango Street and Caramelo or Puro Cuento  152

Appendix: On the Borderlands of U.S. Empire: The Limitations of Geography, Ideology, and Discipline  183

Notes  213

References  239

Index  257

“[An] ambitious undertaking. . . . We thus find on the pages of the book and in Saldívar's readings interesting couplings of trans-American texts, or texts that precisely in their juxtaposition, rather than standing on their own, testify to the process of trans-Americanity and show us an inkling of a larger literary system extending beyond the realm of any one nation-state, in particular the USA.”—Jelena Šesnić, European Journal of American Studies

“[T]his book… captures the visionary post-national mood that has imbued postcolonial studies with an infectious enthusiasm. Saldívar is a respected scholar in the field and this work argues for a transnational, indeed anti-national, approach to American studies…. It is a precarious, but invigorating, path to be following and we do not know where it leads.”—EC, The Latin American Review of Books

“Saldívar is one of the boldest and most important scholars in American Studies today. Like few others, he engages what Martí calls Nuestra América, and for that he should be congratulated. Trans-Americanity is well worth reading.”—Paul B. Wickelson, Rocky Mountain Review

“[An] ambitious undertaking. . . . We thus find on the pages of the book and in Saldívar's readings interesting couplings of trans-American texts, or texts that precisely in their juxtaposition, rather than standing on their own, testify to the process of trans-Americanity and show us an inkling of a larger literary system extending beyond the realm of any one nation-state, in particular the USA.”—Jelena Šesnić, European Journal of American Studies

“[T]his book… captures the visionary post-national mood that has imbued postcolonial studies with an infectious enthusiasm. Saldívar is a respected scholar in the field and this work argues for a transnational, indeed anti-national, approach to American studies…. It is a precarious, but invigorating, path to be following and we do not know where it leads.”—EC, The Latin American Review of Books

“Saldívar is one of the boldest and most important scholars in American Studies today. Like few others, he engages what Martí calls Nuestra América, and for that he should be congratulated. Trans-Americanity is well worth reading.”—Paul B. Wickelson, Rocky Mountain Review

"Trans-Americanity is a magnificent, visionary book. I cannot think of another scholar working today who has helped to instantiate new fields and new lines of inquiry in the manner of José David Saldívar. He is an unusually generous and curious scholar, one who is perfectly willing to rethink earlier assumptions, appreciate the insights of his critics, and read broadly across disciplines. These strengths contribute to what I believe will be an extremely influential text, one that will be widely taught and carefully reviewed."—Mary Pat Brady, author of Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies: Chicana Literature and the Urgency of Space

"Intent on discerning the common concerns of subaltern studies, global coloniality, and transmodernity, José David Saldívar examines persistent motifs and literary themes in the imaginative literature of Greater Mexico and South Asia. Individually and collectively, the minoritized writings that he discusses articulate new epistemological grounds for critiquing a transmodern world governed by global capitalism and new forms of coloniality. Saldívar advocates an 'Americanity' that opens up the idea of America to contexts well beyond the United States, Latin America, and the Western Hemisphere."—Donald E. Pease, author of The New American Exceptionalism

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