Through close readings of various texts that deal with issues of border, identity and the relationship between Haiti and Dominican Republic as well as with the flow of immigrants between Dominican Republic and the United States, this study introduce the trope of the “rayano” (the one that was born, lives or comes from the border) as an apt metaphor to explain the identity of Dominicans in the twenty-first century — an identity that should be viewed as one born out of movements, translations and interstices. The primary texts that this study will focus on will cover the Haitian-Dominican and Dominican-American experiences.  In terms of the former, El Masacre se pasa a pie (1973) by Freddy Prestol Castillo and The Farming of Bones (1998) by Edwidge Danticat are useful for analyzing the defining moment of the relationship between Haiti and Dominican Republic in the twentieth century: the 1937 border massacre of Haitians and Dominican-Haitians ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael L. Trujillo. In the case of the Dominican-American relationship, Dominicanish (2000) by Josefina Báez, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz will be the texts through which it will be analyzed the Dominican diaspora and its relationship with the two defining spaces of Dominicanness in the twenty-first century: Santo Domingo and New York City. In addition to these texts, this study also will engage with the theoretical production regarding the triangular relationship between Dominican Republic, Haiti and the United States through an analysis of the different metaphors used by Lucía M. Suárez in The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory, Eugenio Matibag in Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint: Nation, State and Race in Hispaniola, and Michele Wucker in Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola.

This thesis conducts an analysis of gay identity in Dominican poetry through a queer reading on Frank García’s poetry collection: Lo que escribí mientras esperabas en una habitación vacía (2023). The Dominican society in which the bildungsroman narrative takes place is contextualized as a tender culture, yet largely not acceptant of homosexuality and nonheteronormative forms of gender expression, with high levels of violence against gay people, including at the hands of police and militiamen. The aim of the investigation is to both expand the limited existing body of research analyzing gay Dominican literature, as well as identifying and exploring intersecting factors that detrimentally contribute to the homophobia that the author endures as reflected in his writing. It is concluded that such factors permeating his experience intersecting with homophobia are the peripherical position of Dominican Republic in Spanish-speaking literature and the world system, the relevance of Christianity in Dominican Republic, a vulnerable social class, and his mixed race. This investigation also acknowledges the construction of blackness in Dominican Republic in opposition to Haiti, and the subsequent rejection of several mixed race Dominicans to identify as black, but rather using terms such as trigueño, moreno, or mulato (even though the latter is pejorative) to refer to themselves instead. The author rejects colorist discourses and both claims and embraces his black queer Dominican identity in his writing, further humanizing a highly disregarded and marginalized demographic in mainstream literature and arguably the world system: black gay Dominican men.