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This study explores the literary representations of the post-colonial margin, and develops this site as a place of possibility to transform self identity and acquire power. This exploration of Caribbean-Canadian literature, from writers born in the Caribbean who emigrated to Canada indicates the potential for power in the margins without idealizing this space. / Close readings of fiction by Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand and Marlene Nourbese Philip illustrate various struggles within the margin based on race, gender, economics, and education. Despite vast ideological differences regarding identity, all three authors concur in their characterizations of the margin. In each work, the margin is not a monolithic entity, but rather a diverse space which allows for the constitution of various identities. / This textual analysis in conjunction with critical analysis also addresses issues of language appropriation and cultural ghettoization, by critiquing the right of one group to speak for another in a racially mixed society such as Canada, as well as by critiquing the homogeneity of identity within one racial group. Ultimately, by illuminating these textual and critical trends, this study looks toward possible future directions for Caribbean-Canadian literature.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of French, Classics, and Italian, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 1, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-244). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed January 5, 2010). PDF text: vi, 203 p. ; 745 K. UMI publication number: AAT 3359516. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 16, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3815. Adviser: Kathleen A. Myers.

abstract: With the establishment of "the special period in times of peace" in the nineties, there was in Cuba a series of transformations that affected its artistic and literary production. Therefore, gradually, a thematic opening emerged focused on deconstructing the idealized sociopolitical reality of the island allowing for the reformulation of the ways in which women were depicted. The main objective of this study is to initiate a dialogue with the short fiction produced during this period in order to shed light on the fragmentary representation of female characters. In regards to said objective, the approach selected centers on the observation and analysis of violence, humor and national memory as recurring thematic elements in the texts. With that finality, the aesthetic proposals present in the work of Aida Bahr, Ena Lucía Portela, and Marilyn Bobes, will be analyzed using current literary and cultural theory. Among these the most noteworthy are Josephine Gattuso Hendin's theory of violence and the representations of women, Henri Bergson's theory of humor, and the critical works of numerous scholars specializing in Cuban fiction produced in the last two decades. As has been concluded, through the protagonists and their discourse, thematic and stylistic components contribute to creating new representations of women allowing for new responses and ways of coexisting that cast doubt on the stereotype of the revolutionary woman. These components, likewise, question the relationship between the characters in the stories and the concept of nation, which in the words of Nara Araújo, will allow us to reveal the different ways of reading the world of the present generation. Therefore, through the analysis of the configuration of these reactionary representations, a contribution is made to the study of the current narrative produced by women in Cuba. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2012

<p> The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain&rsquo;s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere, and represented the symbolic pinnacle of U.S. imperialism throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific. During this historical juncture, the U.S. launched the invasion of Puerto Rico and established itself as the governing power. My analysis of this defining event in Puerto Rico&rsquo;s history focuses on the &lsquo;discursive&rsquo; and &lsquo;representational&rsquo; practices through which the dominant representations and interpretations of the Puerto Rican campaign were constructed. In revisiting the U.S. &lsquo;imperial texts&rsquo; of &rsquo;98, most of which have not been studied extensively, it is my intent to approach these narratives critically, studying their ideological and political significance regarding the U.S. acquisition of Puerto Rico as a colony. </p><p> The &lsquo;War of &rsquo;98&rsquo; has been typically represented as an inter-metropolitan conflict, thus relegating to a secondary place the contestatory discourses produced within the colonies. It is the purpose of my dissertation to examine &lsquo;dialectically&rsquo; the cultural counter-discourse produced by the Puerto Rican Creole elite alongside the U.S. official discourses on Puerto Rico, concerning its colonial past under Spanish domination, the military occupation of the island, and its political and economical future under the American flag. With this purpose in mind, I chose to study four post-1898 Puerto Rican novels, specifically Jos&eacute; P&eacute;rez Losada&rsquo;s <i> La patulea</i> (1906) and <i>El manglar</i> (1907), and Ram&oacute;n Juli&aacute; Mar&iacute;n&rsquo;s <i>Tierra adentro</i> (1912) and <i> La gleba</i> (1913), all of which have been underestimated and understudied by literary scholars. </p><p> As a gesture of resistance in the face of the disruption of the old social order (that is, the old patterns of life, customs, traditions and standards of value) caused by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, the island&rsquo;s intellectual elite&mdash;most of which were descendant of the displaced coffee <i>hacendado</i> families&mdash;responded by fabricating an ideology-driven national imaginary and iconography that proposed a hispanophile, nostalgic, and romanticized rendering of the late-19th century coffee landscape (i.e. the pre-invasion period) as an idyllic <i> locus amoenus</i>, thus becoming an emblem of national and cultural identity and values against American capitalist imperialism, the &lsquo;Americanization&rsquo; of Puerto Rico&rsquo;s economy and political system, and the rapid expansion of U.S. corporate sugar interests. </p><p> This dissertation has two distinct yet complementary purposes: first, it examines critically the imperial/colonial power relations between the United States and Puerto Rico since 1898, while questioning the hegemonic discourses both by the Americans and the Puerto Rican cultural elite regarding Puerto Rico&rsquo;s historical and political paths; secondly, it is an attempt to do justice to the literary works of two overlooked Puerto Rican novelists, approaching them critically on several levels (historical, literary, and ideological) and bringing their works out of the shadows and into today&rsquo;s renewed debates around Puerto Rico&rsquo;s unresolved colonial status and U.S. colonial practices still prevalent today.</p><p>

In this study I provide close textual analysis of the novels of three women writers whose work displays a consistent preoccupation with issues of race, and examine the ways in which their racial representations interplay with their depictions of gender and sexuality. Writing from a consciously gendered and racialized position, I combine personal narrative with theoretical discussion as I trace common racial themes, such as racial violence, cross-racial couples, and the denial or erasure of race. In an examination of other critics who have employed personal narrative as a form of literary analysis, I affirm the value of teaching and reading literary texts as a mode of activism. I also examine the depiction of white male protagonists, exploring the ways in which such depictions require a transracial, cross-gender performance on the part of the woman writer. Recurring patterns of racial dynamics emerge in the larger body of each author's work. A West Indian female racial identity emerges in Rhys' work as, consciously and unconsciously, her white heroines identify with black slave women, and seek another form of "blackness" through alcoholic oblivion. Gordimer's white women seek to slough off the racial privilege they are only too aware of, but Gordimer creates narratives in which white female identity merges textually with black male identity and black female identity, linguistically and through shared political action. Morrison's black women, doubly othered by race and by gender, seek to transcend all boundaries through wildly transgressive behavior, enacted boldly or imagined through language. In my final chapter, I explore the ambiguities and struggles of the construction of female racial identity in American, South African and Caribbean contexts, with particular attention to moments of textual rupture which signal the possibility of fluid identity. I demonstrate how Morrison, Gordimer, and Rhys employ a variety of narrative forms which allow readers to enter an in-between space, a starting point for the transformation of consciousness and of society. Literature is an ideal vehicle for entering the in-between space imaginatively, and dwelling there longer and longer as we rid ourselves of preconceived notions of race and gender.

Matrixial reading is a new methodology for literary criticism that emphasizes the ethical relevance of literature. Adhering to an interdisciplinary approach, I adopt feminist artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger's paradigm of subjectivity-as-encounter, based on the maternal/late pre-natal infant relation, to refigure reading relations. Analyzing selected texts, I show how readers are invited to form an ethical covenant based on matrixial, as opposed to phallic, relations. I discuss exile and the foreign in Dany Laferrière's novels; Marguerite Duras' work provokes an epistemological reflection on ignorance; with Nancy Huston I demonstrate the role of reading in healing trauma.

This study reveals the differences and similarities among U.S. Latino and Spanish American literatures. This is achieved through the juxtaposition and dialogue among Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban; Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation ; Rosario Castellano's Balún Canán, and Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca. In choosing texts from Mexico and Cuba we are seeking to reveal contrasts and links with the Chicano and Cuban-American narratives. Similarly, by selecting said texts and authors, there is a balance between issues of sexual gender and orientation, as well as in regards to the original language in which the texts were conceived. In their quest for identity from a marginal starting point, all four authors aim to create a response to hegemony. We approach these texts from the theoretical parameters of the studies of autobiography, with a special emphasis on Bildungsroman, since their protagonists see their self-formation as a process that would enable them to behave in a functional manner in the communities they are immersed. It is from this marginal position that values such as family and education question the power of traditional hegemony. Another element that subverts the establishment is the treatment of gender and sexuality in the texts. Since the protagonists' identity is conceived from a women's or a homosexual standpoint, traditional values are questioned. Finally, the analysis of the texts deals with their relationship to the imagined national space. Castellanos and Rodriguez approach the concept of nation though the indigenous question. Garcia and Arenas relate to Cuba by way of their comment on the Castrist Revolution. The different narratives of the self that make up this study place their voices in the intestitial space of the periphery. It is from that space that they address the center in a variety of ways.