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Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2002. Xii + 244 pp. ISBN 0-8166-2353-8 paper.
Cross/Cultures 51. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. 243 pp. ISBN 90-420-1298-6.
According to both Angelita Reyes and Omar Sougou and much of feminist and postcolonial theory, there is little difference between mothering across cultures and writing across cultures; to write is to "mother" and to teach language and to bridge boundaries. Reyes's touching and lovely argument is for a "global consciousness" of "unity within diversity of the human family [...] to reverberate until humanity gives birth to new ways of being with each other in the world" (3). Sougou contends that Buchi Emecheta seeks a similar peace, "a transformational current of international feminism [...] which challenges patriarchal tradition and enhances the notion of the family, [...] egalitarian partnership between male and female; acknowledging the struggle against imperialism, neocolonialism, racism, and exploitation" (25).
Reyes explores, often in lyrical terms, the works and the identities of such authors as Toni Morrison (and the history of Margaret Garner, the original Sethe of Beloved), Jean Rhys (who shares Reyes's own nationality), Mariama Bâ (of yet another culture), and, finally, Reyes's mother as storyteller. All these writers and tellers are members of a...