Academic responses to Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction are posted as soon as they become available.
Fehskens, Erin M. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. CLIO 45.3 (2016).
Comments on how Market Aesthetics is “models a pitch perfect method of engaging author intentionality through a robust close reading of the form and content of [the] chosen novels.” She notes that the book “could serve as an invaluable text on the pedagogical challenges that the teacher-scholar of global, postcolonial, multiethnic, and multicultural literature regularly encounters.”
Graham, Shane. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez.Postcolonial Text 11.2 (2016).
Describing Machado Sáez’s approach as “fruitful and illuminating,” Graham argues that “Market Aesthetics gives us a framework for reading Caribbean diasporic literature that has both flexibility and explanatory power.”
Park, Paula C. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. Anthurium 13.2 (2016).
Park posits that “Market Aesthetics gives new insights to how Caribbean diasporic writers seek to communicate with readers who consume their historical fiction.” Additionally, she argues that the book “asks readers of Caribbean historical fiction to evaluate their goal as they invest themselves in a reality and a past that they cannot experience first hand. In the end, Machado Sáez thoughtfully reminds us that we—as scholars or readers— will never cease to question our ethical imperative because we are also part of a market that endeavors to label us one way or another.”
Phillips Casteel, Sarah. Rev. of Creole Renegades by Bénédicte Boisseron, Locating the Destitute by Stanka Radović, and Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. American Literary History 28.3 (2016): 624-633.
Phillips Casteel finds that “Machado Sáez’s comparative analysis of diasporic Caribbean literary production has the advantage of foregrounding commonalities among second-generation writers who emerged in an era of multiculturalism in various regions of the Global North.” Additionally, she argues that “Machado Sáez strikingly demonstrates that the novels introduce author- and reader-doubles in order to stage the challenges of reception and communication between author and reader.”
Rodriguez, Cristina. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. New West Indian Guide 91.3-4 (2017).
Rodriguez comments on how Market Aesthetics is “remarkably well researched,” with “literary analyses [that] masterfully thread the novels together.” She sees the book “encourag[ing] scholars of Caribbean literature in our various relegated areas— Hispanophone, Latinx, African-American, Francophone, and Afro-Canadian, among others—to look outside of those boundaries.”
Rohrleitner, Marion Christina. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez and Salvage Work by Angela Naimou. MELUS 41.1 (Spring 2016): 230-236.
Rohrleitner argues that “Market Aesthetics draws attention to the reasons, possibilities, and limitations inherent in the rise of historical fiction in Caribbean diasporic literature and offers a richly contextualized discussion of the effect of multicultural debates and a globalizing market on the production and consumption of literature.” She specifically highlights Chapter One, “Mixed Blessings: Readerships, Postcolonial Ethics, and the Problem of Intimacy,” as “particularly insightful and effective” and envisions this chapter as “a staple assignment in all of my graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in Latina/o and Caribbean diasporic literatures.”
Socolovsky, Maya. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. College Literature 43.2 (April 2016): 470-472.
Socolovsky asserts that “Machado Sáez makes a valuable and original contribution to the field of Caribbean diasporic literature with her superb analysis not only of the fiction itself but also of its global contexts, its ethics of writing production and reading strategies, and its paratexts […] The scope of the work is impressive, as is the insistent call that underlies all the readings, for us to be attentive to our ethical sensibilities and obligations as scholars and readers of Caribbean historical fiction.”
Tirado, Sofia. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. Callaloo 39.1 (Winter 2016): 227-229.
Sofia Tirado remarks that that Market Aesthetics “offers an innovative contribution to the study of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Caribbean diasporic literature” and “presents both a fresh perspective on canonical texts and an analysis of texts not widely discussed.”
Ulibarri, Kristy L. Rev. of Market Aesthetics by Elena Machado Sáez. Caribbean Studies 43.1 (January-June 2015): 237-240.
Ulibarri argues that “Machado Sáez’s call to depart from the celebratory cosmopolitanism of diaspora criticism toward a project where critics must unpack the contradictions of a market aesthetics is a significant critique for Caribbean Studies.” She notes that “In an age of globalization and multiculturalism, this book astutely demonstrates how struggles over representation are struggles about aesthetics.”
Yaworski lauds Market Aesthetics for its “insightful and complex” arguments, particularly the “elegant, fluid discussion in which Machado Sáez draws incisive, macrolevel conclusions about Caribbean diasporic historical fiction.”