Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere

(Paperback)

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Yko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is the first volume of criticism dedicated to the work of Yko Tawada, one of the most highly acclaimed writers of her generation. Douglas Slaymaker has collected a range of essays including many that were featured at the 2006 MLA Conference, where a presidential panel featuring Yko Tawada was organized by MLA President Marjorie Perloff, who has contributed a preface to this volume. The essays explore the plurality of voices and cultures in Tawada's work and push on to explicate the poetics and intellectual underpinnings of her writing. Analyses of her fiction are paired with examinations of its philosophic and aesthetic foundations. The essayists represent a wide range of scholars and translators who are intimate with Tawada's work in German, Japanese, and/or English. Many of the essays begin as close readings of the German and Japanese texts.Yko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is an essential collection for anyone with an interest in this important young writer.

Reviews

Tawada's characteristic method of writing and translation...receive positive treatment from several contributors....This is a timely and insightful collection of essays on an important writer of her generation. * The Journal of Japanese Studies *
One of this collection's significant contributions is that it crafts a space within the Western academy from which Japanese literature can be understood as participating in the conversation on globalization, not as so much cultural cache for increasingly cosmopolitan consumers, but as a literature that is itself commenting on the globalizing process.... Voices from Everywhere creates a transcultural framework in which these multiple readings are encouraged to cross-fertalize and open up beyond the parameters of its pages and invites a sharing of theoretical sources accross area studies borders. -- Robin L. Tierney * Journal of Asian Studies *
To capture the multilingual, cosmopolitan brilliance of Yko Tawada would require assembling a team of scholars specializing in different disciplines and regionsand that is precisely what Douglas Slaymaker has accomplished in this fine volume. At last, we have a study worthy of one of the most interesting writers at work in the world today. -- Michael K. Bourdaghs, University of Chicago

Author Bio

Douglas Slaymaker is associate professor of Japanese at the University of Kentucky.