1 BEYOND MERE REPLACEMENT? TAMA JANOWITZ'S SLAVES OF NEW YORK Francisco Collado Rodríguez. Universidad de Zaragoza. ABSTRACT This paper offers an analysis of the apparent ideology underpinning Tama Janowitz's collection of short stories Slaves of New York. More specifically the analysis is centered on three of the stories: "modern saint #271", "the slaves in new york", and "kurt and natasha, a relationship". A first reading of Janowitz's text may suggest that the author was simply attempting to replace the old androcentric discourse typical of our patriarchal society by a new gynocentric one. However a closer analysis of the selected stories shows that Janowitz's stance seems to be more far-reaching, and advocates for the rights of the individual and the minorities by means of a potentially revolutionary deconstructive criticism. In her volume on American women writers Sister's Choice, Elaine Showalter points out the importance that hibridity and interracial relations have in the kind of contemporary fiction being written by well-known authors such as Alice Walker or Joyce Carol Oates. Quoting from The Purple Color Showalter tells her readers how Celie and Sophia are making a quilt together out of some torn curtains and a yellow dress: "I work in a piece every chance I get. It a nice pattern. Call Sister's Choice". And then the critic adds: The Sister's Choice quilt pattern is a combination of a nine-patch block and a star; the name reflects both the kinship tradition in American women's quilting, and the central image of Walker's writing: the sister's choice to stay with the black Southern community or to move into an interracial international world. For Walker, the pieced quilt is an emblem of a universalist, interracial, and intertextual tradition […] Writing the womanist novel in the contemporary United States is an exercise of sister's choice within a complex cultural network. (Showalter 1991: 20)