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

by Coco Fusco

Book Overview

When Coco Fusco and collaborator Guillermo Gomez-Pena toured the country in a cage as "authentic natives," their provocative performance piece enraged some and enthralled others. Known for using performance to explore the boundaries of ethnicity in art, Coco Fusco has now brought her talents to bear in a volume of cultural criticism and theory, English is Broken Here. Infused with a unique cultural sensibility, English is Broken Here...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565842456
• ISBN13: 9781565842458
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

La Authentic Santera

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.