Miami, Florida is a uniquely situated city. Though it is technically located in the US American South, since the latter half of the 20th century, it has been radically transformed in the wake of substantial waves of immigration. This thesis explores representations of Miami in Joan Didions Miami and Tom Wolfes Back to Blood as diverse and culturally rich on the one hand and rigidly segregated and racist on the other. Using a comparative examination of different immigrant groups to show the favorable treatment of Cuban exiles and refugees, I focus primarily on the representations of Cuban and Haitian refugees in these two works. I argue that Cuba exiles in Miami have received preferential treatment, which I call selective Cuban-American favoritism. I use this idea to expose biases in US immigration policy and to argue that there are shared racial and socio-economic hierarchies in the US and in Cuba. Throughout this project, I employ sociological, anthropological, and historical works to contextualize the cross-cultural conflicts that Didion and Wolfe depict. This contextualization helps me show how these conflicts speak to the broader US structures that have set parameters on Miamis diversity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07022013-181034 |
| Date | 29 July 2013 |
| Creators | McInnis, Tatiana Danielle |
| Contributors | Dr. Vera Kutzinski |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07022013-181034/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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