This dissertation analyzes the representation of sugar plantation societies in nineteenth and twentieth century Puerto Rican literature. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I study the socio-historical, political, and economic development of the sugarcane industry in Puerto Rico as represented in the literary works of Manuel Zeno Gandía, Enrique A. Laguerre, René Marqués, and Rosario Ferré. Scholars have tended to examine their works separately; however, I study how these writers from different literary generations develop a cohesive literary project, reshuffling the periodization of Puerto Rican literature by their focus on the sugar industry. Consequently, the literary works intersect with each other to provide a complete picture of the evolution and decline of the sugar plantation and its effects on the social imaginary of Puerto Rico. I use this term to mean both social practices of Puerto Rican society as well as its class stratification and political struggles. My theoretical approach is based on Antonio Benítez Rojo, "The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective" (1992), where the sugar plantation is defined as the principal unifying entity across the Caribbean, repeated continuously through time and space. I also rely on socio-historiographical approaches developed by Ramiro Guerra, Francisco Scarano, and Ángel Quintero Rivera, whose analyses of the sugar cane industry in the Caribbean shed light on class conflicts, primarily between the sugar oligarchy and factory workers. This dissertation suggests a homology between the socioeconomic structure of the sugar plantation and the Puerto Rican literary canon. I conclude that Puerto Rican writers have recoded the imaginary of the plantation in response to political events and economic shifts within the sugar industry. While Manuel Zeno Gandía and René Marqués promote and redefine its value system, other writers, such as Enrique A. Laguerre and Rosario Ferré, have transgressed the hacienda system to articulate the voice of those communities marginalized by the sugar plantation.

This is a study of the collective identities of Japanese American elderly in a former sugar plantation community in the rural town of Puna, Hawai'i. Investigating their plantation stories in which they remember, evaluate, and represent their past lives on the plantation from the 1920s, to the 1980s, I explore a process of which they collectively delineate their identities in terms of ethnicity, class, generation, and gender. My analysis focuses on the contents as well as the contexts of plantation stories that include their social and cultural circumstances now and then, transitions in the socioeconomic environment in Hawai'i, and historical events that they have gone through. The purpose of this study is to produce an ethnography of remembering that captures ethnographic voice-cultural testimony in which the Japanese American elderly narrate their plantation experience as both an internally-oriented emotional manifestation and an externally-based common understanding of their community. I demonstrate how the Japanese American elderly employ their memories to reconstruct plantation experience and define their peoplehood as the collective identities of plantation-raised Japanese Americans.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:25:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DiegoJFF_DISSERT.pdf: 2673052 bytes, checksum: e334c1dadbab768881c02bd2e0fcbdde (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-24 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / In this work I have searched the symbolical sense of a specific place. I have started from the theoretical assumption that places are social relations resulting from material and symbolical conditions developed in a certain time and by certain factors. In this sense, I have analyzed the symbolical aspect of sugar plantation from some literary works created by the writer Jos? Lins do Rego from the state of Para?ba. I intend to analyze the symbolical dimension senses, values and images used by this writer to show the sugar plantation. Giving special attention to the works from the named cycle of sugar plantation , I have searched for the senses and meanings used in Jos? Lins do Rego literary discourse to create a fictional sugar plantation, showing this place in a specific way. Based in cultural history, I have used several sources: literary works, prefaces of books, memory works, journalistic works, letters written by intellectual men and history books. My time of analysis is from 1919 the beginning of Jos? Lins do Rego s intellectual activity - until 1943 publication of Fogo Morto, last literary work that I have analyzed. In symbolical terms, what is sugar plantation, this place that has totally touched Jos? Lins do Regos life and literary work? That was the structural question that has determined the present research / Investigamos neste trabalho a constru??o simb?lica de uma determinada espacialidade. Partimos do pressuposto te?rico que os mais diferentes espa?os s?o constru??es sociais, fruto de investimentos materiais e simb?licos, realizados em dados momentos e por determinados fatores. Nesse sentido, examinamos a fabrica??o simb?lica do engenho a?ucareiro a partir de algumas produ??es liter?rias do romancista paraibano Jos? Lins do Rego. Almejamos inquirir acerca da dimens?o simb?lica significados, valores e imagens mobilizada por esse literato para constituir a propriedade canavieira. Concedendo uma aten??o especial ?s obras do chamado ciclo da cana de a??car , questionamos-nos sobre os sentidos e significados agenciados pelo discurso liter?rio de Jos? Lins para ficcionar o engenho, forjando essa espacialidade de uma dada maneira. Situando-nos no campo da hist?ria cultural, trabalhamos com uma variedade de fontes: romances liter?rios, pref?cios de livros, escritos memorial?sticos e jornal?sticos, cartas trocadas entres intelectuais e livros de hist?ria. Nosso recorte temporal vai de 1919 in?cio da atividade intelectual de Jos? Lins - a 1943 publica??o de Fogo Morto, ?ltimo romance por n?s analisado. Em termos simb?licos, o que seria o engenho, essa espacialidade que marcou soberanamente a vida e a obra liter?ria de Jos? Lins do Rego? Foi o questionamento estrutural que moveu a corrente pesquisa