For any academic in the Japan field who has had the experience of attending a non–geographically defined conference, such as that of the Modernist Studies Association, for example, and has been discouraged to find that the sole Japan-focused panel drew only their Japan field colleagues, Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere, edited by Doug Slaymaker, presents a welcome opportunity for dialogue outside the channels of area studies. This volume of twelve essays, the first English collection on Tawada's writing, nicely enacts Tawada's project of unmooring language from identity through her off-kilter and humorous experimental fiction; because she writes in both her native Japanese and her distinctly non-native German, it is possible to include criticism from both scholars of Japanese and German literature.
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...
