Introduction: Transnational Latina Narratives

NOTES Introduction: Transnational Latina Narratives 1. It is also worthwhile to note that U.S. Latina narratives of this period in the 1970s and 1980s mainly consisted of Chicana (Mexican American), mainland Puerto Rican woman writers, and a few U.S.-based Cuban writers who were publishing in small presses such as Arté Público Press (formerly Revista Chicana-Riqueña), Bilingual Review, and Third Woman, some initial avenues that were open to ethnic women writers of Latin American heritage/descent. During this time most authors preferred to be identified with their national heritage (e.g., Chicano, Nuyorican, Cuban American), rather than panethnically by adopting a term like “Latina/o.” Since the texts by the women writers in this study share the common theme of transnational migrations, I use the term, “Latina/o,” situationally to refer to the collective, but I use the national identification if the context warrants it in the individual chapters. 2. For a study on U.S. Latina narratives as a Pan-Latina collective that engages postmodernism, ethnicity, and gender, refer to Ellen McCracken’s New Latina Narrative (1999). This critical work approaches Latina narratives within an intercultural context, that is to say, the critic engages narratives by Latina writers as an ethnic group that consists of a diversity of Latin American diasporas. Rather than focus a chapter on the work of individual author, though, McCracken presents a critical paradigm sustained by a variety of Latina writings of the 1980s and 1990s, whereas, I focus my analysis on the intersection of gender, race, and migrations within the transnational context of one post-2000 Latina narrative per chapter. 3. Prominent U.S. Latina narratives of this decade that were mainstreamed include Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991), Ana Castillo’s So Far From God (1993), Denise Chávez’s Face of An Angel (1994), Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), and Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992). The highly influential literary agent who promoted Castillo, Chávez, Cisneros, and Alvarez in this decade is the renowned Susan Bergholz, based in New York City. 4. See Between Woman and Nation (1999) edited by Caplan, Alarcón, and Moallem. This critical collection provides different theories in the multiple definitions of the construction of transnational feminism across global contexts. See also Alexander (1996), Grewal (1994), and Shohat (1998). 5. In the post-2000 period, I would like to draw attention to some fine critical contributions to the study of U.S. Latina narratives, that is to say, chapters, and complete works based on a single national heritage dedicated to a Chicana, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, or Dominican American woman writer’s individual narrative or her collection of works, such 136 Notes as Madsen’s Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature (2000), Saldívar-Hull’s Feminism on the Border (2000), Brady’s Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies (2002), Yarbro-Bejarano’s The Wounded Heart (2001), Moya’s chapters on Cherríe Moraga, and Helena María Viramontes in Learning from Experience (2002), Kevane’s Latina chapters in Latino Literature in America (2003), Calderón’s chapters on Sandra Cisneros, and Cherríe Moraga in Narratives of Greater Mexico (2004), Aldama’s chapters on Ana Castillo in Postethnic Narrative Criticism (2003) and Brown on Brown (2005), R. Rodríguez’s chapter on Lucha Corpi in Brown Gumshoes (2005), Sánchez González’s Latina chapters in Boricua Literature (2001), Rebolledo’s The Chronicles of Panchita Villa and Other Guerrilleras (2005), Ortiz’s Cultural Erotics in Cuban America (2007), Di Iorio Sandin’s and Pérez’s Latina chapters in Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism (2007), Dalleo and Machado Sáez’s chapters on Julia Alvarez and Cristina García in The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (2007), and Caminero-Santangelo’s chapters on Julia Alvarez, Ana Castillo, and Demetria Martínez in On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity (2007). The main Pan-Latina collection, with a focus on (Latina) women writers, to emerge most recently in this post-2000 decade is Quintana’s Reading U.S. Latina Writers: Remapping American Literature (2003). I would like to add that none of these works treats questions of gender, race, and migrations quite as I will in my study. 6. Some Latina authors in the 1990s did publish family narratives such as Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992). The characters in these works were often exiled families who left the homeland and the children or younger generation often invented a nostalgic view of the homeland of a previous generation rather than their own. This process is quite different from the transnational crossings that I observe in the Latina texts of this study. 7. Frances Aparicio and José David Saldívar have highlighted the importance of popular culture in assessing the dynamics of power relations based on gender, border, and/or race matters in cultural production. See Listening to Salsa (1998) and Border Matters (1997). 8. See Mignolo’s Local Histories/Global Designs (2000), Bost’s Mulattas and Mestizas (2003), for example. 9. I extend my gratitude to Erlinda Gonzáles-Berry for pointing out this valuable information on im/migration studies in a transnational context. See Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc (1994, 1995), and Goldring (2002) for further understanding of transnational migration. In the field of cultural studies, Chabram-Dernersesian maintains that a critical transnational- ism “must entertain other types of geopolitical and linguistic complexities . that arise from making strategic connections with other people of colour in the Americas (here and there) and from engaging racial, class, sexual and gender dynamics that are often erased when referring to so-called “Spanish-speaking groups” (1999, 183). 10. Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall are responsible for advancing postcolonial studies through questions of cultural identity and diasporas, especially within the Black British context. In From Bomba to Hip-Hop (2000), Juan Flores reflects on ideas over the Latino imaginary in the context of U.S./Latin American relations of colonization since the nineteenth century. He explains that since the encounter between Western and non-Western cultures and nations in the Americas, beginning with the conquest in the fifteenth century, Latinos, and their ancestors, have always found themselves in positions of forced migration, moti- vated by economic or political forces influenced by law officials. He pays close attention to the transnational aspect of migration for Latinos who have never felt “at home” in any single nation or homeland, but rather had to negotiate at least two locations of residence, living, and settlement, as a result of displacement from Latin America to the United States (198–199). 11. For further Chicano/Latino and postcolonial studies on diasporas, see Calderón (1990, 2004), Dalleo and Machado Sáez (2007), Flores (2000), Hall (1994), Gilroy (1993), Grosfoguel (2005), R. Saldívar (1990, 2006), J.D. Saldívar (1997), and Torres-Saillant (2004, 2006). Notes 137 12. Consider the critical works on Chicana, Puerto Rican, or U.S. Latina narratives by Calderón (1991, 2004), Kevane (2003), Madsen (2000), McCracken (1999), Quintana (2003), Saldívar-Hull (2000), and Sánchez González (2001). 13. See John Chávez’s The Lost Land (1984) and Gonzáles-Berry and Maciel’s The Contested Homeland (2000) for social and historical context of New Mexican history and its particularities. 14. Denise Chávez discussed the impact of Golden Age Mexican cinema first in her interview, “The Spirit of Humor,” in Latina Self-Portraits (2000) and in further follow-up conversations (D. Chávez 2003, 2005). See also Heredia (2008) that expands on Chávez’s transnational feminist border identity. See Menchaca (2007) on race and mestizaje. 15. Cisneros discusses the idea of a global perspective in Caramelo in the interview, “A Home in the Heart,” in Latina Self-Portraits (2000). Also, see Cisneros (1997a, 1998a) in which she discusses belonging to a family of humanity in a global context. See Heredia (2007b) for the relationship between gender and race in the context of transnational travels and migrations between the United States and Peru, which is further elaborated in chapter five of this study. 16. For more inquiry into the musical genre and cultural phenomenon of Salsa, consider Aparicio (1998), Fernández (2001, 2006), Flores (2000), and Sánchez González (2001). 17. Let It Rain Coffee not only addresses Dominican culture, history, and identity in New York City, but it is also important in tracing the consequences of historical migrations across the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. See the critical readings by Torres-Saillant (2000, 2004, 2006) who discusses the impact of blackness on Dominican identity on the island and mainland. Also, refer to Gilroy (1993) and Hall (1994) for further discussion on diasporas, especially with respect to the notion of the triangular Black Atlantic—Africa, the Caribbean, and England (or Europe/United States). I suggest that a similar migratory pattern can also apply to the Spanish Caribbean, especially with respect to the slave history, cultural/racial erasure, and immigration to, and, emigration from, the Dominican Republic. It is just as significant to incorporate Jenny Sharpe (2003) in this critical paradigm because she takes gender and women’s experiences seriously in her study of the Afro-Caribbean literary tradition. 18. In meeting Arana at the Washington Post in 2007 she discussed the relevance of her two worlds, Peru and the United States, in her life and works. For further reading and understanding of the social and historical context in Peru, see Mariátegui (1971), Mignolo (2000), Oboler (2005a), and Quijano (2000). See Heredia (2007b) for the relationship between gender and race in the context of transnational travels and migrations between the United States and Peru, which is further elaborated in chapter five of this study.

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