Book Reviews

Some people may feel thatwe do not need yet another collection of personal essays in the recent tidalwave of introspective narratives bywell-known second language scholars (e.g. L2 academics’ literacy experiences, Belcher & Connor, 2001; non-native educators in ELT, Braine, 1999; language educators’ professional development, Casanave& Schecter, 1997). Othersmay feel disappointed if they are looking fora quick fix to theirwriting/publishing problems.However, for thosewhoare serious about becoming part of a community of L2 theorists and practitioners there is indeed a lot to be learned from the stories of this outstanding group of academics assembled by the Editors, two well-known scholars in the TESOL field, Casanave and Vandrick. True to its title, this book takes the reader ‘behind the scenes’ and demystifies ‘the lengthy social, political, and sociolinguistic processes that lie hiddenbehind thepolished product thatwe finally see inprint’ (p. 6). The storiesare framedwithinWenger’s (1998) community of practice (CofP) notion and highlight members’ trajectoriesandwaysofparticipating indifferent academiccommunities. Skillfully avoiding a potpourri of unrelated tales of success and failure, the editors display their own compositional prowess by succinctly separating the 16essay volume into four parts, which together reflect the multilayered aspects of academic publishing situated within an increasingly diversified second language education field. Especially interesting for this reviewer in Part I (’Newcomers’) is the innovative opener to the book – a reconstructed conversation between Norton and her graduate student, Ena Lee. This is an honest exchange between an ‘old-timer’ anda ‘newcomer’negotiating their respectiveunderstandingsofwhat is involved in becoming an established academic. Taking time out of their ownhectic schedules to mentor graduate students, supervisors play a crucial brokering role in a beginning scholar’s entry into academia. Listening to the authors inPart I hashingoutpractical issues suchashow to transform a dissertation into a book or series of articles, the joys and pitfalls of joint authorship, choosing journals to submit one’s work to, and how to deal with rejection, the reader gets a good sense of how a writer’s identity is shaped through the interplay of one’s previous incarnation as a struggling academic and an imagined competent self as an established scholar. This idea of identity transformation is described by Matsuda ‘as a point when I was able to stop thinking like a graduate student and to startthinking like aprofessional’ (p. 49) – but notwithout a considerable amount of immersion in the field through active participation in discussion lists, extensive reading in a particular subject area, and conference networking, which all help in building a scholarly repertoire. The other two authors in Part I, Vandrick andKubota, take amore critical view of academic subjectivities located at the nexus ofone’s gender, age, race, status and innumerable other categoriesof selfhood. Vandrick addresses the obstacles which are ‘endemic to our profession’ (p. 59), namely, limited publishing opportunities for individuals who are overworked and undervalued in terms ofwhat they could be contributing to the field. Likewise,