The Role of Nostalgia in the Literature of the Caribbean Diasporas – Linking Memory, Globalization and Homemaking Lukasz Dominik Pawelek Wayne State University
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Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2015 The Role Of Nostalgia In The Literature Of The Caribbean Diasporas – Linking Memory, Globalization And Homemaking Lukasz Dominik Pawelek Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Latin American Literature Commons, and the Scandinavian Studies Commons Recommended Citation Pawelek, Lukasz Dominik, "The Role Of Nostalgia In The Literature Of The aC ribbean Diasporas – Linking Memory, Globalization And Homemaking" (2015). Wayne State University Dissertations. 1407. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/1407 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. THE ROLE OF NOSTALGIA IN THE LITERATURE OF THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORAS – LINKING MEMORY, GLOBALIZATION AND HOMEMAKING by LUKASZ D. PAWELEK DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2015 MAJOR: MODERN LANGUAGES (Spanish) Approved by: ___________________________________ Advisor Date ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ © COPYRIGHT BY Lukasz Pawelek 2015 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my wife, Kasia Pawelek and my mother Alina Pawelek. Thank you for believing in me, pushing me over the limits, offering me unconditional love, freedom and well-being, and making me the man I am today. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the wonderful professors, family and friends for providing me with endless support and motivation to complete my dissertation. First, I thank my adviser Dr. Hernán García for meaningful feedback, guidance, and long-term support during my course of study. Especially, I am grateful to Professor García for introducing me to Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia – a book that helped me to comprehend my own immigrant experience and served as pivotal reference point in my doctoral work and in discovering my literary vocation. I am equally grateful to members of my doctoral committee: Professor Hernán García, Professor Eugenia Casielles, Professor Victor Figueroa and Professor Nicole Trujillo-Pagán for your encouragement, attention and time. I would like to pay gratitude to Professor Michael Giordano who always has guided me and helped to attain my potential, starting from the early days of my graduate studies. I am grateful to have learned and achieved practice and experience from inspiring professors at Wayne State University. In particular, I wish to thank Professor Victor Figueroa for instilling early on in my undergraduate career the affection for Caribbean Literature and Latin American Studies. I would like to acknowledge his work and dedication within the department of Classical and Modern Languagues, Literatures and Cultures’ (CMLLC) Graduate Forum. I am thankful to Professor Jóse Antonio Rico Ferrer for his guidance during my undergraduate studies. I also express my gratitude to Professor Anna Rothe who introduced me to the tradition of Ostalgie and collective memory studies on memoir of the Wall in post-unified Germany that opened the pathway to my study on nostalgia as a disease of globalization in Caribbean and U.S. Latino literature. I thank Professor Catherine Barrette for her encouragement and inspiration during my graduate studies and my training as educator and as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Wayne State University. I am particularly thankful to Professor Eugenia Casielles-Suárez for developing in me iii the interest in bilingualism that I pass to my students. I would like to express my gratitude to CMMLLC department at Wayne State as well as to Cindy Sokol and the Graduate School. Finally, I am blessed to have amazing people in my life. My parents, Alina and Edward Pawelek, my sister in law, Aghata Marzec. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues from Wayne State University: Roshawnda Derrick, Juana Coello Tissert, Bruce Fox, Dominik Ochocinski, Sara Escobar Wiercinski, Colleen McNew, and Michael Anderson for their intellectual support and collaboration, classroom discussions and lasting friendship during the graduate school time and beyond. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication………………………….…………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgements...…………………………………………………….…………...……......iii Introduction: …………………………………………………………………………………..1 Goals of Dissertation……………………………………………………………………1 Literature Review……………………………………….………………………………8 Early Conception of Nostalgia…………………………………………………………..8 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Nostalgia a Social Condition………………………….13 Contemporary Research on Nostalgia………………………………………………….16 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Nostalgia a Syndrome of Modern Age….…………….20 Chapter One: Nostalgia between Puerto Rico and New York……………………………...28 1.0 Chapter One Introduction…………………………………………………….……..29 1.1 From Rural Puerto Rico to New York…………………..…………………………..38 1.2 Puerto Rican Jíbara - Longing for the Cultural Identity and Homeland..…………..52 1.3 Chapter One Conclusions……………………………………………………….......75 Chapter Two: Nostalgia in the Cuban Exile…………………………………………………79 2.0 Chapter Two Introduction……...…………………………………………….……..80 2.1 Three Generations of Longing and Belonging……………………………………...89 2.2 Yearning for the Island(s)……………………………………………………….....102 v 2.3 Language of Nostalgia - From Venom to Cure…………………………………....121 2.4 Chapter Two Conclusions…………………………………………………………130 Chapter Three: Dominican Nostalgia in the New Jersey Malaise….……………………..132 3.0 Chapter Three Introduction..……………………………………………….……...134 3.1 Breaking the Silence of Diaspora.……………………………………………..…..150 3.2 Nostalgic Trujillo Days……………………………………………………………164 3.3 Longing in New Jersey Malaise…………………………………………………...174 3.4 Chapter Three Conclusions……………………………………………………......193 Overall Conclusion…………………… …………………………………………………......196 Final Note on Nostalgia….……………………………………………………………….......209 Footnotes.……………………………………………………………………………………..211 Introduction Footnotes: ……….………………………………………………………211 Chapter One Footnotes………………………………………………………………...211 Chapter Two Footnotes………………………………………………………………..212 Chapter Three Footnotes………………………………………………………………212 References.……………………………………………………………………………………214 Abstract.………………………………………………………………………………………226 Autobiographical Statement...………………………………………………………….……228 vi 1 INTRODUCTION Goals of My Dissertation My dissertation topic, “The Role of Nostalgia in the Literature of the Caribbean Diasporas – Linking Memory, Globalization and Homemaking,” emerged from my interest in Hispanic migrant literature and my graduate course work at Wayne State University. I propose an analysis of nostalgia as a metaphor of globalization. Furthermore, I will approach nostalgia as a literary figure to study this phenomenon from a comparative perspective paying special attention to diasporic Caribbean narrative of late 20th and early 21st centuries. The goal of my dissertation is two-fold: 1) to analyze nostalgia as a syndrome of the modern age and as a product of globalization; and 2) to examine its manifestations in the literature of Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican diasporas written by so-called 1.5 generation of Latino/a authors in the United States. The 1.5 generation refers to individuals who are born in one country and relocate to the U.S. as children or before they reach adolescence. My study offers a comparative analysis of two memoirs and a novel written by Caribbean authors Esmeralda Santiago and Gustavo Pérez Firmat, who emigrated to the U.S. before reaching adolescence in the 1960s similar to Junot Díaz, who came to the U.S. in the early 1970s. My investigation encounters and analyzes common reference points through the varying representations of nostalgia. The literary representation of nostalgia has not been fully explored in the Latin-American context, and studying its social, cultural, political, and national manifestations remains crucial in the age of globalization. Specifically, my approach to the notion of nostalgia as a syndrome of globalization offers a novel contribution to the Caribbean diasporic narrative and by extension to the canon of the U.S. Latino/a Literature. Through the metaphoric analysis of nostalgia in the literary works studied, I will examine the literary representation of the migratory 2 experience of the Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican Hispanic groups residing within the United States. I will argue that nostalgia can be considered an important aspect of the assimilation process, the formation of Latino/a culture identity, collective memory, and the reconstruction of urban spaces. Writers who have roots in both the United States and the Caribbean Islands such as Junot Díaz (Dominican Republic), Gustavo Pérez Firmat (Cuba), Esmeralda Santiago (Puerto Rico), and many others, portray stories that are framed projections of nostalgia. In my dissertation, I study their works, including: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Díaz 2008), Next Year in Cuba (Pérez Firmat 1995), Cuando era puertorriqueña (Santiago 1994). Their works rest on the premise that immigrants do not leave their history in their homelands, but rather bring them into their new home, where the past turns into a vitality that impacts families for generations. Additionally, immigrants are impacted by loss