Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept of English, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-87).

El propósito de la tesina presente es analizar la manera de expresar las dificultades de una identidad híbrida en dos poemas contemporáneos de dos escritoras de origen latinoamericano, Gloria Anzaldúa y Julia Alvarez. Se han analizado los dos poemas elegidos teniendo en cuenta la perspectiva de una identidad híbrida y los problemas que ello conlleva en una sociedad llena de normas y fronteras entre grupos étnicos, culturales y sexuales. Después del análisis de los poemas sigue una comparación entre los resultados de la investigación y finalmente presentamos nuestras conclusiones. El estudio muestra que a pesar de que los poemas parezcan muy diferentes se han encontrado puntos de relación, como por ejemplo la similitud de los mensajes principales de los poemas; que necesitamos aceptar las mezclas de culturas, etnias y sexos. / The purpose of this study is to analyse the expression of the difficulties with a hybrid identity in two contemporary poems written by two authors from Latin America, Gloria Anzaldúa and Julia Alvarez. The analysis of the two poems take into account the perspective of a hybrid identity and the problems that this entails in a society filled with rules, standards and boundaries between different ethnic, cultural and sexual groups.  The analysis of the two poems is followed by a comparison of the results of the investigation and ultimately is presented the conclusions. The study shows that the poems share several respects, despite that they at first seems very different. An example is the similarities of the main messages that the poems convey, that we need to accept the mix of cultures, ethnics and sexualities.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:07:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TitoMFJ_DISSERT.pdf: 1131538 bytes, checksum: cb4178f843dfdf9a5d46d5e8caebc742 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-06-02 / This master s thesis aims at investigating the way in which diasporic subjects in the novel How the Garc?a Girls Lost their Accents (1992) cope with the clash of two cultures the Caribbean one, from the Dominican Republic, and the North-American one, from the U.S., as well as the implications of such negotiations in the lives of immigrants, once it apparently depicts the plight of those who are torn between mother-lands and mother-tongues (IYER, 1993, 46). At the same time, the implications of such negotiations in the lives of immigrants are relevant issues in the writing of Julia Alvarez. For this, there is the analysis of the uses of family memories as one of the main strategies immigrant writers possess to recall their identities. Moreover, this thesis will also consider the language issue for the construction of the immigrant identity insofar as bilingualism is a key factor in the negotiation the Garc?a girls must effect between their Caribbean and their American halves in order to understand where they stand in the contemporary world. In order to build a theoretical framework that supports this master s thesis, we list the works of Homi K. Bhabha (1990, 1996, 2003, 2005), Stuart Hall (2001, 2003), Julia Kristeva (1994), Salman Rushdie (1990, 1994), Sonia Torres (2001, 2003) among other contributions that were crucial to the completion of this academic research / A presente disserta??o objetiva investigar a maneira em que sujeitos diasp?ricos ficcionais da obra How the Garc?a Girls Lost their Accents (1992), de Julia Alvarez (1950 ), negociam o embate entre duas culturas a caribenha, oriunda da Rep?blica Dominicana, no Caribe, e a estadunidense, proveniente dos Estados Unidos da Am?rica, j? que aparentemente espelha a dor daqueles que se encontram divididos entre terras natais e l?nguas maternas (IYER, 1993, p. 46). As implica??es desta negocia??o na vida do imigrante s?o quest?es relevantes na escrita de Alvarez. A autora leva em considera??o o uso das mem?rias da esfera familiar como uma das estrat?gias essenciais empregadas por escritores imigrantes para rememorar sua(s) identidade(s). A signific?ncia da escrita das reminisc?ncias do ?mbito familiar ? observada como um meio de apresentar a coletividade da escrita imigrante e, mais importante, como um meio que escritores imigrantes de diferentes lugares usam para se sentirem conectados uns com os outros. Do mesmo modo, leva-se tamb?m em considera??o a quest?o da l?ngua na constru??o da identidade imigrante para buscar entender onde as irm?s Garc?a se posicionam no mundo contempor?neo, visto que o bilinguismo ? um fator chave na negocia??o que agencia entre suas por??es caribenha e estadunidense. Dentre os autores estudados, citamos Homi K. Bhabha (1990, 1996, 2003, 2005), Stuart Hall (2001, 2003), Julia Kristeva (1994), Salman Rushdie (1990, 1994), Sonia Torres (2001, 2003) e outras contribui??es que foram imprescind?veis para a finaliza??o desta pesquisa

This study examines Julia Alvarez's best-known works, García Girls and In the Time of the Butterflies, to explore the intertextuality within Dominican-American fiction through the vocabulary and methodology of trauma studies and witnessing. Alvarez's work indicates that traditional academic discourse about witnessing often translates trauma survivors into tourists by legally dispossessing them from the witnesses they could provide as they seek to assign blame and pass judgment on the source of their traumatic experience. This process of exclusion threatens to hinder the ability of Dominican-Americans to work through their shared, traumatic experience with the Trujillo regime. Furthermore, this study contends that as Alvarez privileges fiction and the imagination, instead of historiography, as the appropriate sites for witnessing, she invites other members of the collective to share their witnesses in an effort to populate the structure of the trujillato in order for the collective to better come to terms with their shared trauma.

Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (ruled 1930-1961) developed the reputation as one of the most violent and oppressive leaders of the Western Hemisphere in his thirty-one years of power. Authors Julia Alvarez and Mario Vargas Llosa provide insight into the effects of Trujillo's infamy by sharing the stories of Dominican women. In Alvarez's novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, the Dominican-American author fictionalizes the lives of the Mirabal sisters, historical women who were assassinated in 1961 for their involvement in the anti-Trujillo movement. Likewise, Vargas Llosa centers much of his novel, La fiesta del Chivo, on the life of Urania Cabral, a fictional female character who is raped by Trujillo at the age of fourteen. Both the Mirabals and Urania grow up amidst dictatorship and Alvarez and Vargas Llosa frequently focus on their characters' growth as they progress from childhood and adolescence into adulthood. This formative time in the protagonists' lives is often impacted by Trujillo and his actions. In particular, Alvarez and Vargas Llosa emphasize the unique process of female identity formation as a means of highlighting the cruelty of the Trujillo dictatorship. Female development is often described as a process that focuses on connection and relationships to others. As a result, women often demonstrate a high ability to respond to the needs and feelings of the people in their lives. Alvarez's depiction of the Mirabal sisters reflects these principles as her characters mature into strong women by learning the value of selflessly caring for others. The Mirabals' concern for people contrasts to Trujillo's character, which Alvarez portrays as violent, selfish and petty. Conversely, Vargas Llosa's protagonist experiences a traumatic event at the age of fourteen that severely inhibits her growth. As a result of Trujillo's cruelty Urania loses her ability to connect with others and becomes cold and distant. Urania's developmental obstacles reflect the debilitating effects dictatorship can have on individuals, and by extension, on a whole nation. In both In the Time of the Butterflies and La fiesta del Chivo the concept of female development shapes and informs the portrayal of Rafael Trujillo and his corrupt government.

No description available.

My thesis discusses the ways in which Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) and In the Name of Salomé (2000) are revolutionary texts contesting traditional, male dominated history and redirecting historical and communal foci to the lives of Dominican women. I employ Walter Benjamin's theories found in his essays "The Storyteller" (1936) and "On the Concept of History" (1940) to assist my exploration of Alvarez's questions concerning the power and effect of storytelling, and the importance of reconstructing various historical voices and images, specifically, the importance of reconstructing female voices in male dominated cultures. I discuss the female-narrated component to Dominican history which Alvarez creates in her reconstruction of the lives of these women. Alvarez confronts the challenge of breaking these women out of their marginalized status by combining fiction with history in her reconstruction of their lives. Alvarez assumes the multifaceted role of mediator, story-teller, and historian as she remembers and re-presents Dominican history through the eyes of women who lived, experienced, and affected change within the Dominican Republic. Without merely act as a reporter of historical "facts," Alvarez reconstructs the lives of these women fictionally, applying her impressions and ideas about the personalities, feelings, and thoughts of these women, and historically, utilizing first and secondhand accounts and information about the women. Ultimately, the women are presented as individuals but are also connected to a collective memory and history. As individuals with human characteristics, the women are no longer inaccessible legends. As members of a collective memory and history, the women are redeemed from the isolating effect of their patriarchal society which would have women remain silent. Due to Alvarez's reconstruction, their stories finally have the potential for further dissemination in the future with the possibility to affect other oppressed peoples. Thus, Alvarez's reconstruction of the resistance of a few women in Dominican history produces the capacity for additional resistance by Alvarez's audience to the same forces that these women were combating which continue to exist today — forces such as patriarchy, dictatorial governments, fascism, and economic disparity.

The increased contact between nations and cultures in the globalization of the twenty-first century requires an increased accountability for the ways in which individuals and countries negotiate these points of contact. New World and Caribbean Studies envision the cross-cultural and transnational encounters between indigenous, European, and African peoples as important contributors to a paradigm within which identity in relation offers an alternative to identities rooted in national and filial frameworks. Such frameworks limit the ability to construct identity without relying upon static representations of history, culture, and ethnicity that tend to privilege one group over another. In the literature of Edwidge Danticat and Julia Alvarez, however, a fictional space is created that rewrites national histories and problematizes rooted identities through their novels' characterization. This fictional space is a transnational paradigm that—in the vocabulary of the critical theories of Édouard Glissant, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, and David A. Hollinger—explores the effects of cultures founded on ideas of relation and affiliation rather than on rooted socio-cultural legitimacy and ethno-political authority. Danticat and Alvarez's characters engage in a process of present living that allows them to negotiate their experience of diaspora and maintain a stable construction of identity in relation.