Isolation on and Off the Island: the Politics of Displacement in Contemporary Spanish Caribbean Fiction

ISOLATION ON AND OFF THE ISLAND: THE POLITICS OF DISPLACEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY SPANISH CARIBBEAN FICTION By Gretchen Susan Selcke Dissertation Submitted by the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish August, 2015 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: William Luis, Ph.D. Cathy L. Jrade, Ph.D. Benigno Trigo, Ph.D. Lorraine M. López, Ph.D. Copyright © 2015 by Gretchen Susan Selcke All Rights Reserved To my husband Phil for his unwavering love and support and To my daughter Belén Amanda iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without Vanderbilt University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I am grateful for financial support from Vanderbilt’s Graduate Select Scholars Award, the Center for the Americas’ Fellowship, the Library Dean’s Fellowship for the Manuel Zapata Olivella Correspondence Collection, and the E. Inman Fox Graduate Teaching Award. These awards and fellowships, among others, helped me to complete this project. I am especially indebted to Professor William Luis, my first and greatest champion. He is a wonderful mentor and scholar whose lasting contributions to Latino Studies shape the field. Thank you to Professor Cathy Jrade, who as Department Chair for most of my tenure at Vanderbilt, provided guidance and set an example of professional excellence. To Professor Benigno Trigo, thank you for your careful attention and support. To Professor Lorraine López, thank you for your encouragement and willingness to support graduate education. My committee has been tested, and I am forever in their debt. I am grateful to all of those with whom I have had the honor to work during this and other projects. Special thanks are owed to Dean Russell M. McIntire, my mentor during my two years as the Enhancing Graduate Education Graduate Student Fellow, and again as I helped to coordinate the College of Arts and Science Admitted Students Open Houses. He is the best of men and I will miss his steadfastness and humor. To Professor René Prieto, now at the University of Texas at Dallas, thank you for enthusiastically supporting my early career as a graduate student. Thank you to Latin American and Iberian Bibliographer Paula Covington, whose knowledge of the field matches her work ethic. As a Library Dean’s Fellow for the Manuel Zapata Olivella Correspondence Collection, I learned archival and digitization skills that will serve me well. The Special Collections, as well as the College of Arts and Science Deans’ iv Office, were instrumental during my final year at Vanderbilt. Finally, thank you to Vanderbilt University’s Writing Studio, especially Jeff Shenton, John Bradley, and Kristen Sullivan. I would also like to thank my friends and family. Had my mother not put me alone on a bus to Gijón, Spain when I was fourteen, I would never have fallen in love with Spanish as I have. I would like to thank my father for believing in me always, even though he does not speak Spanish. Thank you to Amanda, who is like a sister, and to my sister Patricia, for their love and friendship. To my “hermana española” and colleague Carmen Cañete Quesada, thank you for showing me how it is done. Most importantly, I would like to express my love and appreciation to my husband, Phil. I once told him that we could not get engaged until I defended my dissertation. I am grateful to him for not waiting and for continuing to support me. Finally, thank you to my bright, delightful daughter Belén, who represents the best of me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………………….ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: ISOLATION ON AND OFF THE ISLAND………………………………1 Latino Literature: A Definition………….……………………………………………………..5 The Latin American Boom………………………………………………………….……….....7 Latino Literature’s Connections to the Latin American Boom…………….…………………15 The post-Boom………………………………………………………………………………..16 Alienation and Latino Literature……………………………………………………………...17 Tato Laviera’s “nideaquinideallá”…………………………………………………….………18 Displacement and Isolation…………………………………………………………………...22 Displacement, Replacement, and Nostalgia…………………………………………………..28 2. CUBAN CHAOS: ZOÉ VALDÉS’S LA NADA COTIDIANA (1995) AND OSCAR HIJUELOS’S DARK DUDE (2008) AND BEAUTIFUL MARÍA OF MY SOUL (2010)……………………………………………40 The Backdrop of the Cuban Revolution and the “Special Period”…………………………….42 Responses to the “caso Padilla”……………………………………………………………….50 The “Special Period”………………………………………………………………………….54 Zoé Valdés’s La nada cotidiana: Writing the “Special Period”……………………………….57 Oscar Hijuelos’s Dark Dude and Beautiful María of My Soul: Exile’s Aftermath………….....70 Dark Dude: Not Cuban Enough……………………………………………………………….73 Beautiful María of My Soul: Exile and Memory………………………………………………80 Exile: A Cuban “Sea of Regrets”……………………………………………………………..93 3. ENDEMIC DOMINICAN VIOLENCE: JUNOT DÍAZ’S DROWN (1996) AND THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (2007) AND LOIDA MARITZA PÉREZ’S GEOGRAPHIES OF HOME (1999)…………………...95 Drown: Hereditary Patterns of Male Violence………………………………………………103 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Learning from La Inca’s Legacy…………………..112 Geographies of Home: Inverting the Inheritance……………………………………………129 The Dominican Legacy of Violence………………...……………………………………….141 vi 4. UNCOMMON COMMONWEALTH: PUERTO RICO’S PARTICULAR CULTURE OF DISPLACEMENT IN ROSARIO FERRÉ’S THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON (1995) AND LUIS RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ’S LA GUARACHA DEL MACHO CAMACHO (1976)…………………….………...……...…142 The House on the Lagoon: An Alternative to the Established Order………………….……...154 La guaracha del Macho Camacho: History on Repeat………………………………………184 Is Puerto Rico an Island Sin Salida?………………………………….……………………...212 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………213 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………...222 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: ISOLATION ON AND OFF THE ISLAND The Spanish Caribbean of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is defined by both its proximity to and separation from the United States. In terms of geography, water is a dominant metaphor that isolates and connects Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico in a constant state of movement to and from the mainland. While this trope of movement predates Spanish colonization, its recent permutations in contemporary Spanish Caribbean fiction have shifted the meaning of historical migratory patterns. Movement to and from the United States complicates the superficial binary opposition of island and mainland, creating a third space defined by displacement and alienation. The result of this absence is disjuncture, both in terms of history, geography, and culture. Contemporary Spanish Caribbean writers reveal the aftermath of this fragmentation by reading their own culture from a place of ambiguity. Cuban authors Zoé Valdés and Oscar Hijuelos, Dominican authors Junot Díaz and Loida Maritza Pérez, and Puerto Rican authors Rosario Ferré and Luis Rafael Sánchez are all displaced writers in their own right, and read their countries from the outside, both linguistically, culturally, and geographically. Their writing exposes the historical misalignments that shape the contemporary Spanish Caribbean and the pervasive displacement of its people. The relationship between fragmentation and isolation, as well as the sense of alienation that results from this association, grounds the works that I study. The Oxford English Dictionary defines fragmentation as “A breaking or separation into fragments.” Additionally, when used in a biological context, fragmentation is defined as the “separation into parts which form new individuals.” Both definitions are useful when considering migration and isolation because they 1 refer both to the breaking apart of families and themes of identity. Turning again to the OED, isolation is defined as “The action of isolating; the fact or condition of being isolated or standing alone; separation from other things or persons; solitariness.” However, especially in psychological and sociological contexts, isolation is “The separation of a person or thing from its normal environment or context, either for purposes of experiment and study or as a result of its being, for some reason, set apart.” This second definition, and its notion of being “set apart” helps to explain the sense of “not belonging” experienced by the characters in the novels that I study. While the term displacement is well-established as a means to understand the repercussions of Spanish colonization, I argue that the specific relationship of the United States with the Spanish Caribbean and the alienation it produces better accounts for social realities within its codified borders and its diaspora. Again relying on the OED, “alienation” is defined as “estrangement; the state of being estranged or alienated.” Historically, “alienation” also meant “The taking of something from a person, esp. without authorization; appropriation.” For my purposes, a sense of belonging and place is this “something” taken, and its effects on families are both alienating and isolating. The term I use for this is fragmentation. In these works, fragmentation is first a political reality due United States’ policies that are in fact those of neo- colonization. I read this colonization through its cultural, linguistic, and structural aftermath in Latino works that define Spanish Caribbean diasporic literature. Specifically, I am interested in how children of those who survived historical trauma inherit both the scars of their parents’ memories

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