Reviewed by: Queequeg's Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature by Birgit Brander Rasmussen Teresa Coronado Birgit Brander Rasmussen . Queequeg's Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. 207p. Birgit Brander Rasmussen's Queequeg's Coffin is an eye-opening deconstruction of the way we consider writing in early American literature. With thorough research, an extensive notes section, and concrete examples, Queequeg's Coffin is a welcome addition to the realm of early American scholarship. In Queequeg's Coffin, Rasmussen proposes and supports the argument that literacy comes in more forms than scholars of early American literature normally pursue, reminding us that "Without the survival of people literate in alphabetic script, it, too, might have become a misunderstood relic presumed to be merely mnemonic. This realization should remind us that the legibility of a given writing system is intimately tied to the fate of the culture of which it is a part" (91). With this understanding, Rasmussen studies the narratives of wampum, the Andean quipu, and Polynesian graphic marks on bodies and wood. Rasmussen works with the premise that "Broadening the definition of writing in the Americas beyond a particular semiotic system—the alphabet—disrupts a whole complex of cultural meanings, as well as dynamics of dominance" (4). To support this thesis, Rasmussen first interrogates the normalizing process of defining "writing" as alphabetic script, then goes on to explain where this process was interrupted by other kinds of writing, and how this offers a space to see and better understand indigenous literacies. For instance, in Chapter Two, "Negotiating Peace, Negotiating Literacies: The Undetermined Encounter and Early American Literature," Rasmussen illustrates how indigenous literary disruptions can occur through colonial writing. Rasmussen argues that Barthélemy Vimont's The Jesuit Relations exhibits a struggle to understand and record the meeting between French settlers and Kiotseaeton, a Haudenosaunee orator. Because Kiotseaeton reads wampum, Vimont's recording of the event follows the "terms and textual logic" of the wampum (54), interrupting the hegemony of Western writing, and, Rasmussen argues later, colonial desires. Throughout the text Rasmussen's argument depends on the idea of dialogics, [End Page 86] and in Chapter Three, "Writing in the Conflict Zone: Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno" this concept is exemplified in Poma's narrative, which, Rasmussen argues "brings together distinct literary traditions and perspectives that are often radically at odds with each other. He embodies them on the pages of his manuscript in order to bring them into dialogue and knot them together into a new narrative in which disparate perspectives and claims are reconciled into an admittedly uneasy coexistence" (105). Poma's indigenous history is written mainly in Spanish, the language of the conquerors, but, as Rasmussen argues, Poma's manuscript embodies the quipu, an Andean method of writing using complexly knotted cords, as part of its narrative and organization structure. In Chapter Four, "Indigenous Literacies, Moby-Dick, and the Promise of Queequeg's Coffin," Rasmussen further examines dialogic possibilities in Herman Melville's work, which, she argues, gives presence to indigenous writing and "alternatives to the fatal embrace of colonialism" (137) normally associated with Typee and Moby-Dick. Rasmussen does not always remain on solid ground in each chapter, offering "probably" and "suppose" a number of times; yet, these suppositions come after a scaffolding of evidence and grounded theoretical discussions. The speculations in Queequeg's Coffin do not take away from the scope of the text; rather, they offer scholars a place to build on Rasmussen's theories and work, just as she has built on the work of others. Finally, the text is a boon to those who teach in this field. Queequeg's Coffin offers opportunities for faculty who struggle with one of the more difficult aspects of teaching early American literature, namely, addressing writing and literacy in non-Western cultures and bringing students into conversations with pre-Columbian texts, texts of conquest, and texts that allow for interrogation of conquest and cultural imperialism. While Rasmussen's book may be more accessible to the advanced graduate student than undergraduates, there is much to be learned and pedagogy to...
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