The Location of Transculture M ARK S TEIN Every transculturation [...] is a process in which both parts of the equation are modified, a process from which a new reality emerges, transformed and complex, a reality that is not a mechanical agglomeration of traits, nor even a mosaic, but a new phenomenon, original and independent. To describe this process the word trans-culturation [...] provides us with a term that does not contain the implication of one certain culture toward which the other must tend, but an exchange between two cultures, both of them active, both contributing their share, and both co-operating to bring about a new reality of civilization. 1 ACKIE K AY , it could be argued, is not a ‘transcultural’ author by any description; she grew up in a white family in Scotland, has lived in Britain all her life, and continues to do so. However, as a black woman in a white country; as a member of a visual minority; as a Scottish woman in England; and as a homosexual in a heterosexist culture, Kay may well qualify for inclusion in an emergent transcultural canon. And yet, are such biological, social, and biographical parameters at all appropriate or even helpful in the context of transcultural writing? Kay’s texts reflect transcultural experiences and predicaments and they do, indeed, undermine “habitual classification of literary texts in terms of national or regional literatures.” Dealing with ques- tions such as cultural ‘belonging’ and linguistic variety, phenotype and 1 Bronislaw Malinowski, “Introduction” to Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobac- co and Sugar, tr. Harriet de Onís (Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, 1940; tr. Durham NC & London: Duke UP , 1995): lviii–lix. J