As a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies with degrees in political science and government, Edwina Barvosa is uniquely positioned to push disciplinary boundaries and knowledge production. Working within Chicana/o studies—a field that emerged from struggle, resistance, and innovation—Barvosa adopts a refreshing interdisciplinary approach and method in her Wealth of Selves. She draws from and complicates debates involving the formation, existence, manifestation, and implications of multiple identities in political theory, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, sociology, literature, feminist theory, and Chicana/o studies. She aims to cross disciplinary boundaries and engage a broad readership. Her effort to write “jargon-free” chapters and use “metaphors and imagery drawn from familiar sources” such as films and autobiographies will appeal to readers new to her topic, and more specialized audiences will appreciate her breadth and depth of scholarship (pp. 17–18). More scholarship could benefit from a greater willingness to transcend disciplinary boundaries and this concerted attempt to reach a wider audience.

Barvosa begins her discussion of multiple identities with a nuanced distinction of the construction of ethnic and national identities among Latinas/os. Subtitling chapter 1 “Replies to the Query Who Are We?” after a recent book by Samuel Huntington, Barvosa tackles the long-standing belief in academic and broader public thought that all individuals and communities within the U.S. must assimilate by forgoing their ethnic identities and cultural practices and adopting Anglo-Saxon, Protestant norms, values, and traditions. As Barvosa demonstrates, underlying this assimilationist imperative is the assumption posited by Huntington and others that Latina/o immigration is a threat to U.S. national identity and democracy. Barvosa systemically deconstructs these claims by first detailing the individual and societal benefits of biculturalism and then illustrating how ethnic and national identities are neither synonymous nor necessarily relational.

Barvosa convincingly details how ethnic cultural assimilation is not a prerequisite for developing a strong U.S. national identity. She illustrates how Latinas/os who are born in the U.S., migrated as children, and those who are permanent residents may express ethnic identities such as Mexican, Chicana/o, or Latina/o, but they most often claim a U.S. national identity, which includes knowledge of and commitment to U.S. political principles and laws. For more recent Latina/o immigrants, Barvosa challenges the assumption that national loyalties are categorical—that one can be loyal to only one nation. Instead, she combines the concept of “distributed loyalty” with the metaphor of (re)marriage to illustrate how transmigrants may have multiple identities and loyalties. As with divorcees, transmigrants have pre-migration commitments and values (e.g., family ties, community connections, strong work ethics, and economic independence) that constitute key components of U.S. identity. Thus, Barvosa believes that the multiple identities of Latinas/os and immigrants are not undermining U.S. national identity and democracy. In contrast, she astutely locates blame in exclusionary assimilationist paradigms and a rigid national identity that is conflated with ethnic identity.

In chapters 2 and 3, Barvosa continues her theoretical conceptualization of multiple identities by drawing on the significant work of individuals such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, and W.E.B. Du Bois. By considering the multiple processes influencing identity, including how identities are contextual and negotiated in relationship to social-political constructs and everyday interactions, Barvosa provides an overview for readers who are either new to the area or who are reluctant to forgo the traditional belief of a unitary or integrated and conflict-free self.

Rather than end her analysis by combining the work of a range of theorists from fields that are rarely in dialogue, Barvosa spends much of the second half of the book presenting her own theoretical framework and methodological approach. In particular, she connects the framework of intersectionality to identity schemes that include internalized meanings, values, and practices associated with understanding and performing a particular identity. Furthermore, she examines the relationships between multiple identities, their contradictions, and critical thinking by integrating a range of secondary sources. For example, she uses interviews from sociologist Mary Waters's qualitative research with West Indian youth to show how internalizing and living between multiple identities—in this case as West Indian and Black American—provides a basis for the development of critical moral thought and contesting dominant norms. Barvosa also includes a rereading of an extended case study of “J,” a Nazi collaborator, initially detailed by philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. Veering from MacIntyre, Barvosa exposes how since J's multiple identities as father, soldier, sports club officer, and railway engineer were all built on similar values of authority, patriarchy, and conquest, J was limited in his capacity for critical thought to resist Nazism. Through such nuanced analyses, Barvosa offers a subtle and unstated critique of what she refers to as “neo-classic” assimilationism. She advocates for the importance of ensuring that individuals possess heterogeneous and even contradictory identities to better ensure the capacity for critical thought that is necessary within a democracy. Likewise, as Barvosa persuasively argues, individuals who possess a diversity of multiple identities and a willingness to engage in self-reflection about such identities and the sources of their thoughts, feelings, and actions have the possibility of impacting individual and societal change. Those who do not engage what she names “intrapersonal politics” are maintaining the status quo by failing to interrogate dominant structures, ideologies, and the roots of one's beliefs and identities.

Near the end of her book, Barvosa explores more closely the implications and modes of coping with identity contradictions. She does so by continuing her pattern of engaging relevant theories and concretizing her ideas in specific cases. To illustrate the process of how people integrate their multiple identities that may also be constructed by others as mutually exclusive, such as identifying as Latina and lesbian, Barvosa includes the experiences of philosopher María Lugones and coins the term “life project”—or life goal or commitment. This concept is helpful for understanding how individuals such as Lugones may reconcile seemingly contradictory identities by framing them within a larger life project. As Barvosa explains, for Lugones, this involves the adoption of a life project of anti-subordination that leads her to contest homophobia, sexism, and racism and embrace her identities within a larger context of racial/ethnic and gender conflict and hierarchies. Realizing that such strategies of self-integration may not change how others see and treat one, Barvosa builds from the work of Anzaldúa and Jane Flax to specify how flexibility and ambivalence toward group membership are often used as coping mechanisms when dealing with the pain inflicted by others who challenge one's identity claims. Thus, Barvosa is attentive to individual agency in negotiating and claiming identities, but she does not ignore the role of structures, cultures, and everyday interactions in identity formation.

Overall, in Wealth of Selves, Barvosa provides an innovative interdisciplinary theory to understanding multiple identities. Barvosa is keenly aware of the advantages and disadvantages of working across and between multiple disciplines; she discuses these in two of her early chapters. As she demonstrates, interdisciplinarity allows scholars to mine work from multiple fields. Focusing on what she refers to as a “pan-disciplinary concern,” Barvosa's thinking and writing are stronger and more complex precisely because of her approach. She pushes debates surrounding identity formation in several disciplines. However, as she also details, one of the shortcomings of such an approach is the possibility of reducing readership because audiences may be unfamiliar with theorists and concepts from multiple disciplines. Barvosa works hard at avoiding this pitfall by aiming to be jargon free, writing with clarity, and encouraging her audience to read chapters and sections that most appeal to them. Nevertheless, this book may not receive the wide readership that it deserves. While this book will probably appeal to graduate students and scholars of identity who cross disciplinary borders, many undergraduate students and those outside of academia would have benefited from more background and context. Despite this downside, this book suggests the exciting possibilities that are emerging from “border crossers” who are working within and across areas such as Chicana/o studies that are transdisciplinary and have long challenged dominant approaches in traditional departments.