Copyright by Paula Sanmartín 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Paula Sanmartín Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: “Custodians of History”: (Re)Construction of Black Women as Historical and Literary Subjects in Afro-American and Afro- Cuban Women’s Writing Committee: César A. Salgado, Supervisor Susan S. Heinzelman, Co-Supervisor Naomi E. Lindstrom Jennifer M. Wilks Aline Helg “Custodians of History”: (Re)Construction of Black Women as Historical and Literary Subjects in Afro-American and Afro- Cuban Women’s Writing by Paula Sanmartín, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2005 Dedication A mi familia que me ha apoyado sin cesar durante toda mi carrera. A Ricardo, que tanta inspiración me ha dado. A mis amigos, que tanto creyeron en mí. A Sherley Ann Williams, por haber plantado en mí ese granito de arena que tanto ha crecido. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Program of Comparative Literature and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for their support throughout the years; the Cuban writers and scholars I met in Havana, who willingly and generously helped me with my work. I would like to thank especially the members of my committee: César A. Salgado, for guiding and supporting me throughout the process of writing my dissertation; Susan S. Heinzelman, for her guidance and kindness, which went beyond the professional relationship; Naomi E. Lindstrom, for her relentless editing of my chapters; Jennifer M. Wilks, for her insights on my work; and Aline Helg, for remaining in my committee despite having moved to another country. v “Custodians of History”: (Re)Construction of Black Women as Historical and Literary Subjects in Afro-American and Afro- Cuban Women’s Writing Publication No._____________ Paula Sanmartín, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisors: César A. Salgado and Susan S. Heinzelman Set within a feminist and revisionist context, my dissertation examines literary representations of the historic roots of black women’s resistance in Cuba and the United States, by studying texts by both Afro-American and Afro-Cuban women from four different literary genres: Harriet Jacobs’s autobiographical slave narrative, a neo-slave narrative by Sherley Ann Williams, the testimonio of María de los Reyes Castillo (“Reyita”), and the poetry of Nancy Morejón and Georgina Herrera. Conscious of the differences between the texts, I nevertheless demonstrate how the writers participate in black women’s self-inscription in the historical process by positioning themselves as subjects of their history and seizing discursive control of their (hi)stories. vi Although the texts form part of separate discourses, I explore the commonalities of the rhetorical devices and narrative strategies employed by the authors as they disassemble racist and sexist stereotypes, (re)constructing black female subjectivity through an image of active resistance against oppression, one that authorizes unconventional definitions of womanhood and motherhood. My project argues that in their revisions of national history, these writings also demonstrate the pervasive role of racial and gender categories in the creation of a discourse of national identity, while promoting a historiography constructed within flexible borders that need to be constantly negotiated. Putting these texts in dialogue with one another both within and across geopolitical boundaries, my project is characterized by a tension between positions, from close textual readings to historical commentaries, as I develop multilayered readings drawing on sources that range from cultural history and genre studies to psychoanalytical theory and black feminist criticism. The authors’ literary representations of their culture of resistance constitute an essential contribution to literary and historical studies, suggesting a dialectic model for “reading dialogically” such concepts as “subjectivity,” “discourse,” “tradition,” and “history,” by simultaneously exploring multiple, contradictory, or complementary discursive spaces. This dialectic of identification and difference, continuity and change, serves to describe the intertextual relationships within Afro-American and Afro-Cuban literary traditions. Simultaneously, drawing on vii dialogic relationships can open up new lines of enquiry and redress the historical imbalance of Western historiography by presenting black women’s history and subjectivity as multiple and discontinuous. viii Table of Contents Introduction. “Custodians of History”: (Re)Construction of Black Women as Historical and Literary Subjects in Afro-American and Afro-Cuban Women’s Writing........................................................................................... 1 1. Gender and Genre..................................................................................... 19 2. Authorship and Authority......................................................................... 20 3. Rebellious (M)Others............................................................................... 21 4. National Identification.............................................................................. 22 5. Revising (Hi)stories.................................................................................. 23 Chapter 1. “We Could Have Told Them a Different Story”: Harriet Jacobs’s Alternative Narrative and the Revision of the White Transcript ................. 37 1. Hybrid Genres: Assimilation and Subversion in Autobiographical Slave Narratives .................................................................................. 43 2. The Female Slave Author and the Dialogic of Discourses in Incidents.. 57 3. “The War of Her life”: Harriet Jacobs’s Rebellious Motherhood............ 80 4. Split Subject/Split Nation: Abolitionism, Miscegenation and Black Women as National Subjects............................................................. 100 5. Rewriting the Slave Woman’s “Histories.”............................................ 119 Chapter 2. “They Mistook Me for Another Dessa”: Correcting the (Mis)Reading Techniques of the Master(’s) Narrative .............................. 146 1. Neo-Slave Narratives and the Revision of the Slaves’ Texts................. 150 2. “Twice-Told Tales”: Real and Fictive Authorships in a Black Women’s Double-Voiced Text ......................................................... 161 3. Devil Woman or Debil Woman?: Asserting Rebelliousness Through an Interracial Sisterhood.................................................................... 182 4. One Single Nation?: Interrelation of Communities in Dessa Rose........ 203 5. Revising the Fictions of History............................................................. 215 Chapter 3. “In My Own Voice, In My Own Place”: The Continuous Revision of History in a Black Cuban Woman’s Testimonial Narrative .................. 242 1. The Dialectics of Testimonio: Past, Present ... and Future?.................. 246 ix 2. A Family Feud? “Authority-in-Process” in the Production of Reyita, sencillamente: testimonio de una negra cubana nonagenaria.......... 259 3. Like Mother, Like Daughter: The Rebel/Revolutionary (M)Other....... 275 4. Black and/or Cuban: The Black Female (M)Other of the Cuban Nation................................................................................................ 289 Chapter 4. Revolution in Poetic Language: (Re)Writing Black Women’s History in Black Cuban Women’s Poetry.................................................. 324 1. Neo-Negrista Poetry? : Searching for the “Authentic” Black Female Subject............................................................................................... 331 2. Authorship and (State’s) Authority in Black Cuban Women’s Poetry .. 351 3. Black Cuban Women Poets and the Revolutionary Black (M)Other..... 369 4. “National” Poetry? Diaspora and/or Transculturation in the Representation of Cuban National Identity....................................... 388 5. (Re)construction of (Revolutionary) History ......................................... 411 Bibliography........................................................................................................ 451 Vita .................................................................................................................... 490 x Introduction. “Custodians of History”: (Re)Construction of Black Women as Historical and Literary Subjects in Afro- American and Afro-Cuban Women’s Writing [This space owned by the Commission is] safe for a political activist, safe for a woman and wife, official in its acknowledgement of her story as the truth and official in giving her the space to become a historian, a custodian of history despite her gender. - Antje Krog, Country of my Skull (1988) In Country of my Skull, Antje Krog analyzes the “Special Hearings on Women” organized in 1997 by the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” which was formed to address the violation of human rights by the system of Apartheid in South Africa. These hearings emphasized the idea that both the silences and the words of those women who struggled against Apartheid had to be examined. The quotation selected above focuses on the necessity for black women activists to have a “safe space” in which to tell their untold stories, “despite their gender.” Reading Krog’s book, as well as many excerpts