“Somewhere between Puerto Rico and New York”: The Representation of Individual and Collective Identities in Esmeralda Santiago's<i>When I Was Puerto Rican</i>and<i>Almost a Woman</i>

Echano, Marta Vizcaya

doi:10.1080/0144035032000235846

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…When I was a Puerto Rican is an auto-ethnographic narrative of a woman writer as the hybrid subject that constructs selfdiscourse in a transcultural space where differences in language and culture are the dominant events (Watson, 2013). However, a more complicated reading considers both When I was Cultural Hybridity and its Complexity..... ©2020, Jentera, 9 (2), 115-146 Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman as the narrative ways the memoirs portray the complicated interactions between Santiago's geographical locations, the changes in her understanding of class and ethnicity caused by displacements, and her dynamic attitudes towards the various communities both shaping her sense of self and being reshaped by her narratives (Echano, 2003). The two novels construct the renegotiations of identity by describing various communities-rural and urban Puerto Rico, economically deprived and upwardly mobile Puerto Ricans in the continent, and middle-class white America.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Hybridity and Its Complexity in Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost a Woman

Setiawan

2020

JENTERA

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Abstrak. Tulisan ini mendiskusikan hibriditas dalam novel Almost A Woman karya Esmeralda Santiago. Novel ini menceritakan permasalahan kultural yang dialami Negi, tokoh utama, sebagai imigran Puerto Rico di New York, di mana ia harus mengapropriasi budaya Amerika agar bisa diterima oleh masyarakat induk. Untuk membahas permasalahan tersebut, kami akan menggunakan teori poskolonial Bhabha. Analisis tekstual digunakan untuk menjelaskan data terpilih dengan cara pandang poskolonial tanpa mengabaikan keterkaitan kontekstualnya dengan dinamika imigrasi dan diaspora. Hasil kajian ini menunjukkan bahwa tokoh utama harus menjalankan strategi kultural berupa mimikri dan hibriditas agar bisa diterima di masyarakat induk dan bisa mendukung impian modernnya. Meskipun menikmati budaya Amerika secara apropriatif, ia masih berusaha untuk tidak melupakan budaya Puerto Rico. Dengan strategi ini subjek diasporik bisa menegosiasikan kepentingannya di tengah-tengah masyarakat induk dan kuasa budaya dominan, tanpa harus meninggalkan sepenuhnya budaya Puerto Rico. Abstract. This paper discusses hybridity in Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost A Woman. This novel tells about cultural problems experienced by Negi, the main character, as a Puerto Rican immigrant in New York, where she must appropriate American cultures in order to be accepted by the host community. To discuss this problem, we will apply Bhabha's postcolonial theory. Textual analysis is used to explain selected data from a postcolonial perspective without ignoring its contextual relationship with the dynamics of immigration and diaspora. The results of this study show that the main character must carry out a cultural strategy in the form of mimicry and hybridity in order to be accepted in the parent community and be able to support his modern dreams. Despite enjoying appropriately American culture, she still tries not to forget Puerto Rican cultures. With this strategy the diasporic subject can negotiate its interests in the midst of the host society and the dominant cultural power, without having to completely abandon Puerto Rican culture.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Hybridity and Its Complexity in Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost a Woman

Setiawan

2020

JENTERA

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“…The memoirs of the Puerto Rican American woman writer Esmeralda Santiago, When I was Puerto Rican (1993), Almost a Woman (1998) and The Turkish Lover (2004), can be read as self-narrations that voice this issue of de/reterritorilization, especially, for the Puerto Rican woman migrant whose struggle against these negative economic and social conditions is even more complex and tenuous since it involves a battle with male dominance and cultural patriarchy as well as class and racial strife. Furthermore, given the fact that Puerto Ricans are more or less described as "a nation on the move" (Duany, 2002), the issue of Puerto Rican female selfhood involves a constant shift in positioning. Caught between the patriarchal nationalism of her island community and the overwhelming fast-paced yet liberating culture change of the United States, the Puerto-Rican woman tries to find steady points of reference within her dual yet contrapuntal 4 national identity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From “Jibara” to “Chiquita”: Confessions of Dis-Belonging in Esmeralda Santiago’s Memoirs

Çoker¹

2018

Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi

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This paper by focusing on the intersection of race, gender and identity as reflected in the three memoirs of the Puerto-Rican American writer Esmeralda Santiago, When I was Puerto Rican (1993), Almost a Woman (1998) and The Turkish Lover (2004), attempts to read into the complex dynamics of the Puerto-Rican migrant female experience. Esmeralda Santiago's memoirs that intertwine the problem of transculturation with that of male dominance and cultural patriarchy rest on her desire to find and sustain a stable point of reference in a world marked by mobility, transitivity, discontinuity and fragmentation. The feelings of vulnerability and invisibility that she constantly experiences within her Puerto-Rican culture and later with her Turkish lover lead her to resist rather than accept a gendered and racialized self. However it also leads her to forge an identity "distinct from" and "in conflict with" the significant Others around her. In When I was Puerto Rican, she is the black jibara "Negi" highly critical and at odds with her Puerto/AmeRican island heritage; in Almost A Woman, she is the lost young female Esmeralda trying to rise above her mother, family and Nuyorican community; and in the The Turkish Lover she is the Esmeralda Santiago who learns to judge her own self and others through the social and racial categories and cultural standards of American society. This paper asserts that unlike many women autobiographical writers, Esmeralda Santiago can achieve to create a sense of belonging in her life only through an assertion of difference and later through the contestation of her Puerto-Rican female identity.

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Strategic Autoethnography and American Ethnicity Debates: The Metrics of Authenticity inWhen I Was Puerto Rican

Watson¹

2013

Life Writing

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“Somewhere between Puerto Rico and New York”: The Representation of Individual and Collective Identities in Esmeralda Santiago'sWhen I Was Puerto RicanandAlmost a Woman

Cited by 3 publications

References 3 publications

Cultural Hybridity and Its Complexity in Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost a Woman

Cultural Hybridity and Its Complexity in Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost a Woman

From “Jibara” to “Chiquita”: Confessions of Dis-Belonging in Esmeralda Santiago’s Memoirs

Strategic Autoethnography and American Ethnicity Debates: The Metrics of Authenticity inWhen I Was Puerto Rican

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