Reading Native American Literature by Joseph L. Coulombe (review)
offered more than simply cynicism in its thinking over history, and to see the postmodern elements of Kingston's work as undermining her political project seems short-sighted. The limits of realism—those points of disruption in Lee's chosen texts—are the limitations with which postmodernism seeks to critically engage. (This dismissive attitude to postmodernism, which is mentioned only once in the index, is a shame, although perhaps not wholly unexpected in a book whose construction of the relationship between historical reality and aesthetics is indebted to Lukács, Adorno, and Jameson.) Nevertheless, despite this lacuna, The Semblance of Identity has a bold and original argument. Lee's conclusion that "the pressing task is to scrupulously expose the dangers of identity politics while recognizing its critical potential" is surely one that will prove influential in Asian American studies and in ethnic studies more generally (152).