The term transculturation was first used by the Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz to describe the formation of Cuban culture from the coming together of indigenous, Spanish, and African populations. (Ortiz gave prominence to the term in two chapters of his book Tobacco and Sugar, 1947: chapter two is entitled "The Social Phenomenon of Transculturation and Its Importance," and chapter seven has the title, "The Transculturation of Tobacco.") In his studies, Ortiz shows how these groups interrelated, adopted, and adapted themselves in modes of language, music, art, and agricultural production. The contemporary usage of the term owes its academic parlance to the work of Mary Louise Pratt, who, in her book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), following Ortiz, tells us that processes of this kind occur within "contact zones," "zones where cultures meet, clash, and grapple." These zones, according to Pratt, express the improvisational dimensions of colonial...