English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas

Coco Fusco writes about culture and identity with keen insight, wit and passion. I take the title for this review from one of her own performance pieces in which she describes herself as Yoruba-Taino-Catalan-Sephardic-Neopolitan-Cuban-American. She notes wryly, "In the 1990s that makes me Hispanic." Her outlook transcends conventional notions of ethnicity and illuminates how "American" identity is undergoing transculturation. Her chapter providing a "reverse ethnography" of how whites behave at exhibits of native peoples is brilliant. I've incorporated her material for use in a college race relations course, and students of all ethnic backgrounds relate strongly to it.