The objective of this exegesis is to show how linguistic and cultural hybridity create a unique prose style, and how my stories sit within that style. I will use Grace Paley and Lucia Berlin to demonstrate the distinctive narrative techniques. These include the use of sensuous details (instead of descriptions) to make place and character palpable; dialogue that convincingly evokes living speech; plots which emanate from the characters, rather than the other way round; and open-ended resolutions, as in real life. I will then show how I use these narrative techniques in my collection Happiness and other stories. The collection of stories is embargoed until 31 March 2012.

The objective of this exegesis is to show how linguistic and cultural hybridity create a unique prose style, and how my stories sit within that style. I will use Grace Paley and Lucia Berlin to demonstrate the distinctive narrative techniques. These include the use of sensuous details (instead of descriptions) to make place and character palpable; dialogue that convincingly evokes living speech; plots which emanate from the characters, rather than the other way round; and open-ended resolutions, as in real life. I will then show how I use these narrative techniques in my collection Happiness and other stories.

The objective of this exegesis is to show how linguistic and cultural hybridity create a unique prose style, and how my stories sit within that style. I will use Grace Paley and Lucia Berlin to demonstrate the distinctive narrative techniques. These include the use of sensuous details (instead of descriptions) to make place and character palpable; dialogue that convincingly evokes living speech; plots which emanate from the characters, rather than the other way round; and open-ended resolutions, as in real life. I will then show how I use these narrative techniques in my collection Happiness and other stories. The collection of stories is embargoed until 31 March 2012.

This research aims to understand self-translation as a postcolonial, social, political, cultural and linguistic phenomenon and it focuses on how it communicates a hybrid transcultural identity that not only challenges the monolingual literary canons and concepts of national homogeneous identities, but also subverts to patriarchal society. Thus, I understand self-translation as a mean of empowerment and contestation. The cases under study are Puerto Rican writers Rosario Ferré and Esmeralda Santiago, and their novels The House on the Lagoon and América’s Dream, written in English and translated into Spanish by the authors themselves. I believe that Rosario Ferré and Esmeralda Santiago are representative of a group of writers, artists and intellectuals who through their work originated from the island and from the U.S. Diaspora, have aimed to give voice to a Puerto Rican postcolonial hybrid identity that has been silenced until recently. Therefore, they disrupt the official national cultural and linguistic discourse about the Puerto Rican identity that has been weaved by the Spanish language in opposition to U.S. colonialist attempts of linguistic and cultural assimilation. This dissertation is located in the intersection between the fields of comparative literature, translation, cultural, gender and postcolonial studies. The question that guides this research is: Is self-translation in the case of Puerto Rico, a result of cultural hybridity in Puerto Rico’s postcolonial context?Therefore, this is a multidisciplinary research project that integrates elements from the humanities and the social sciences. Methodologically, it integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches. Hence, hybridity is embedded in this research not only because it discusses English and Spanish writing, but because it includes textual analysis, content analysis and statistical analysis. The main finding is the deep conection between socio-political context, language, culture, identity, power and translation that supports the idea that self-translation is a postcolonial act, which in the case of Puerto Rico is strongly related to hybridity as an everyday practice of identity affirmation.

No description available.

Cette thèse étudie le thème du mariage interculturel et des identités hybrides de personnages dans The Pickup (2001) de Nadine Gordimer, The Translator (1999) de Leila Aboulela et A Mighty Collision of Two Worlds (2002) de Safi Abdi. L’étude cherche à explorer comment les identités culturelles des protagonistes changent lorsqu’ils se marient avec une personne d’une culture différente des leurs et qu’ils rencontrent de nouvelles traditions et de nouvelles croyances. La théorie de l’hybridité développée par Homi Bhabha et par d’autres théoriciens de l’hybridité peut être un outil pertinent pour analyser l’identité des personnages. Bhabha soutient que ceux qui traversent les cultures vivent dans un “in-between space” ou un “third space,” fluctuant entre leur culture d’origine et leur culture d’accueil. Cependant, les conclusions de l’étude montrent que ces personnages de fiction présentent des cas qui n’ont pas été explorés par les théoriciens de l’hybridité. On s’aperçoit d’autre part, que plusieurs facteurs de nature culturelle, religieuse, personnelle ou sociale influencent les protagonistes dans les romans : soit ils leur identité hybride s’affirme, soit ils conservent la façon de vivre de leur pays d’origine. On remarque aussi que les mariages interculturels et l’identité hybride sont liés entre eux. Le mariage interculturel peut être à la fois la manifestation de l’hybridité, et dans ce cas il est perçu comme une affirmation du vécu hybride servant du même coup de moyen d’aller vers l’hybridité. Contrairement à ce à quoi on pourrait s’attendre, on observe que parfois les relations interculturelles entraînent une réaction anti-hybride / This dissertation studies the subject of cross-cultural marriage and hybrid identities of characters in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup (2001), Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999), and Safi Abdi’s A Mighty Collision of two Worlds (2002). The study seeks to find out how the cultural identities of the protagonists in the novels change when they marry across cultures and face new traditions and beliefs. Hybridity theory, which is developed by Homi Bhabha and other hybridity theorists, can be a relevant tool for analysis of the characters’ identities. Bhabha contends that those who cross cultures live in an “in-between space” or “third space” in which they oscillate between their native culture and the host culture. However, results show that fictional characters present cases which have not been explored by hybridity theorists. In addition, it is stressed that various factors of a cultural, religious, personal, and social nature affect the protagonists in the novels to either develop a hybrid identity or maintain their native way of life. It is also found that cross-cultural marriage and hybridity are correlated. The former can be both a manifestation of hybridity, where the protagonists’ cross-cultural marriage is seen as an assertion of their hybrid experience, and as a means to hybridity. Contrary to expectations, it is observed that cross-cultural relationships lead to an anti-hybrid reaction