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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Edwidge Danticat And Shadows: The Farming Of Bones As A Vehicle For Social Activism, Jessica Petit-Frere Mar 2016

Edwidge Danticat And Shadows: The Farming Of Bones As A Vehicle For Social Activism, Jessica Petit-Frere

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Farming of Bones is Edwidge Danticat’s novel about Amabelle Desir, a Haitian migrant in the Dominican Republic during the 1937 Haitian massacre. The Massacre is a historical fact presented through a fictional text that acts as a testimonial. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate how Danticat, in her role as an activist, urges readers to become social justice seekers and enter the discourse of race. Through an examination of Carl Jung’s and Vodou’s shadow theories in regards to the construction of a racial identity by Haitians and Dominicans, I uncover the racial narratives in place from Haiti’s …


Kittens In The Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, And The Search For Identity In Julia Alvarez’S How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, Natalie Carter Jul 2014

Kittens In The Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, And The Search For Identity In Julia Alvarez’S How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, Natalie Carter

Natalie Carter

The search for an ever-elusive home is a thread that runs throughout much literature by authors who have immigrated to the United States. Dominican authors are particularly susceptible to this search for a home because “for many Dominicans, home is synonymous with political and/or economic repression and is all too often a point of departure on a journey of survival” (Bonilla 200). This “journey of survival” is a direct reference to the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who controlled the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. The pain and trauma that Trujillo inflicted upon virtually everyone associated with the Dominican Republic …


Hybridity, Trauma, And Queer Identity: Reading Masculinity Across The Texts Of Junot Díaz, Hannah Fraser Legris Jan 2014

Hybridity, Trauma, And Queer Identity: Reading Masculinity Across The Texts Of Junot Díaz, Hannah Fraser Legris

Theses and Dissertations--English

When writing about Junot Díaz’s Drown (1996) Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) and This is How You Lose Her (2012), I focus on the iterations of masculinity depicted and embodied by Yunior de las Casas, the primary narrator of this collection. I explore the links between diaspora, hybridity, masculinity, and trauma, arguing that both socio-historical and personal traumatic experience reverberates through the psyches and bodies of Díaz’s characters. I demonstrate the relationship between Yunior’s navigation of the United States and the Dominican Republic and his ever-shifting sexuality, self-presentation, and gender identity. The physical and discursive spaces he must …


Colorism In The Spanish Caribbean: Legacies Of Race And Racism In Dominican And Puerto Rican Literature, Malinda Marie Williams Jan 2011

Colorism In The Spanish Caribbean: Legacies Of Race And Racism In Dominican And Puerto Rican Literature, Malinda Marie Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the impact of colorism on Spanish Caribbean literature--more specifically, works of fiction and memoir by both island and diaspora writers from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Colorism, or discrimination based on the shading of skin, manifests itself in Spanish Caribbean literature in a variety of ways. It is often used as a marker of class and/or class difference; it may reflect and/or play a part in shaping cultural standards of beauty or attractiveness; and it signifies the entrenched complexities of the Spanish Caribbean's history of conquest and colonization. Colorism appears in these texts as both a …


Kittens In The Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, And The Search For Identity In Julia Alvarez’S How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, Natalie Carter Jan 2010

Kittens In The Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, And The Search For Identity In Julia Alvarez’S How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, Natalie Carter

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The search for an ever-elusive home is a thread that runs throughout much literature by authors who have immigrated to the United States. Dominican authors are particularly susceptible to this search for a home because “for many Dominicans, home is synonymous with political and/or economic repression and is all too often a point of departure on a journey of survival” (Bonilla 200). This “journey of survival” is a direct reference to the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who controlled the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. The pain and trauma that Trujillo inflicted upon virtually everyone associated with the Dominican Republic …