Steven G. Kellman

Switching languages : translingual writers reflect on their craft

parate cultural manifestations of utopian post-phallic culture (68). With examples drawn from art, literature, film, politics, society, and entertainment, Barr weaves a cultural critique ofsociety through the lens of Feminist Science Fiction. Another important scholar in the field of feminist science fiction (and feminist fiction in general), Anne Cranny-Francis, combines feminist theories of the body and the cyborg with an analysis of the figure of the cyborg or Borg characters in several Star Trek productions, both television and film (145). Another remarkable contribution is made by Deirdre Byrne in Truth and Story: History in Ursula K. Le Guins Short Fiction and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Com-

Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft

Though it is difficult enough to write well in ones native tongue, an extraordinary group of authors has written enduring poetry and prose in a second, third, or even fourth language. Switching Languages is the first anthology in which translingual authors from throughout the world examine their experiences writing in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one. Driven by factors as varied as migration, imperialism, a quest for verisimilitude, and a desire to assert artistic autonomy, translingualism has a long and brilliant history. In Switching Languages, Steven G. Kellman brings together several notable authors from the past one hundred years who discuss their personal translingual experiences and their take on a general phenomenon that has not received the attention it deserves. Contributors to the book include Chinua Achebe, Julia Alvarez, Mary Antin, Elias Canetti, Rosario Ferre, Ha Jin, Salman Rushdie, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and Ilan Stavans. They offer vivid testimony to the challenges and achievements of literary translingualism. Steven G. Kellman is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the author of The Translingual Imagination (Nebraska 2000) and The Self-Begetting Novel, and is the co-editor of UnderWords: Perspectives on Don DeLillos Underworld.