[Download] "When I was Puerto Rican As Borderland Narrative: Bridging Caribbean and U.S. Latino Literature (Estudios y Confluencias)" by Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: When I was Puerto Rican As Borderland Narrative: Bridging Caribbean and U.S. Latino Literature (Estudios y Confluencias)
- Author : Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura
- Release Date : January 22, 2009
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,Reference,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 115 KB
Description
Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican bridges the categories of U.S. and Caribbean literatures in challenging ways. I use Santiago's Bildungsroman to help make visible, in the Anglo-Caribbean at least, a previously invisible segment of American literature: "U.S. Latino/a literature." As a domain of publishing, and an area of academic inquiry, this is now a part of the cultural mainstream in the U.S. Latino literature and a part of the curriculum in universities and secondary schools across the U.S. This is also a booming sub-specialty affiliated both with American Studies, and Latin American Studies, in universities across Europe. When I Was Puerto Rican can also be located within a larger category of immigrant literature. Santiago's text begins with a remembered Puerto Rico, and ends in the United States of the author's adulthood. Studying Santiago's text within a trajectory of immigrant narratives famaliarizes the text to a wide variety of readers who are often processing their own parallel entries into the U.S. or its cultural orbit. Within the context of analyzing Santiago's text as a Bildungsroman and immigrant narrative, I will also examine Santiago's representation of jibaros, a subculture that preserves traditional Spanish folkways. Their place in Puerto Rico parallels the conflicted relationship many Jamaicans have with Rastafarians. Both groups are often portrayed as embodying elements of the national soul, but are also sometimes condemned and marginalized even as they are celebrated in official discourse. Since Santiago foregrounds jibaro African-ness, she works against the grain of a tendency in Puerto Rican literary history to "whiten" the jibaros (Torres-Robles, 1999).