The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Comparative Literature DIASPORA AND REPRESENTATION: JEWISH ARGENTINE, TURKISH GERMAN, AND CHINESE AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS A Dissertation in Comparative Literature by Luz Angélica Kirschner © 2008 Luz Angélica Kirschner Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2008 The dissertation of Luz Angélica Kirschner was reviewed and approved* by the following: Sophia A. McClennen Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Women’s Studies Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee Djelal Kadir Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature Bettina Mathes Associate Professor of German, Science, Technology & Society, and Women’s Studies Véronique M. Fóti Professor of Philosophy Caroline D. Eckhardt Professor of English and Comparative Literature Head of the Department of Comparative Literature *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract Drawing upon the work of Chandra Talpade Mohanty, this dissertation is born of a concern regarding the prevalence of criticism that presents essentializing analyses of work by minority writers; therefore, the primary aim of this research is to complicate readings of immigrant literatures, particularly those of immigrant women. All too often, literary analyses of minority women writers’ works offer reductive and, at times, even inaccurate readings of specific immigrant realities. Such literary criticism posits a continuous and universal female immigrant identity as well as an immutable, inescapable immigrant status. Consequently, analyses of their literary works frequently represent their immigrant experiences as those of perpetual victims trapped at the juncture of an absolute cultural divide between static cultures: that of their culture of origin and of their “guest country.” Other essentializing readers suggest that, in spite of the immigrant woman’s apparent lack of agency, she has felicitous options: after resolving her ethnic conflicts, which include a formulaic critique of the guest country’s culture, these critics presume that the immigrant woman achieves a joyful assimilation or, more accurately, a state of felicitous hybridity in which she consciously chooses the best aspects from each discrete culture and finds fortuitous personal resolution. In this project, I explore writing by the Jewish Argentine writers Cecilia Absatz (1943- ) and Nora Glickman (1944- ), the Turkish German writers Seyran Ateş (1963- ) and Yadé Kara (1965- ), and the Chinese American writers Gish Jen 1955- ) and Sigrid Nunez (1951- ). By examining their works through a non-binary rather than a binary lens, this research complicates the logics of incommensurability and stereotypical facile hybridity that have prevailed in the literary analysis of narratives of immigrant women. iv The readings offered here avoid such dichotomies as inclusion vs. exclusion, majority vs. minority, oppressor vs. oppressed, or the center vs. periphery/margin/fringe/interstice of nations and endeavors, in order to instead enhance the literary criticism of minority writing, to portray minority women as integral members of the nations that many of them have come to view as their home countries. These women writers, as instigators of change who are capable of refashioning the circumstances of their lives, also fashion narratives that present their own critical perspective on their own situation. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Chapter 1 Preliminaries 1 1.1. Introduction 1 1.2. Some Problems of Self-Representation 5 1.3. Literary Analysis of Immigrant Writing: Foundational Criticism 6 1.4. Dilemmas of Categorization and Naming 9 1.5. Charting the Project 14 Chapter 2 Contextualizing Minorities 22 2.1.Cultural Contexts 22 2.1.1. Jewish Circumstance in Latin American Lands 23 2.1.2. A “Peculiar People” in Germany 37 2.1.3. Can Chinese Americans be “Real Americans”? 49 2.2. Tracing the Presence of Immigrant Women in Mainstream Feminisms 55 2.2.1. Latin America and the Workings of “Spiritual Empathy” 57 2.2.2. A Homogeneous German Nation, “with Guests” 70 2.2.3. The U.S. American Case: Can Invisibility be a Result of the Natural Flow of Events? 82 Chapter 3 Migrant Literatures 89 3.1. Immigrant Realities Through Literature 89 3.1.1 Argentina and the Intricacies of Jewish Gauchas 89 3.1.2. Questioning the “Germanness of German Literature” 97 3.1.3. Chinese American Women Writing in the Promised Land 107 3.2. Conclusions 120 Chapter 4 Cecilia Absatz and Nora Glickman: Reevaluating Latin American Identity 126 vi 4.1. Cecilia Absatz 128 4.1.1. Los años pares 130 4.2 Nora Glickman 147 4.2.1. Uno de sus Juanes y otros cuentos 149 Chapter 5 Seyran Ateş and Yadé Kara: Interventions in the Debate between “the Orient and the Occident” 172 5.1. Seyran Ateş 174 5.1.1. Große Reise ins Feuer. Die Geschichte einer deutschen Türkin 175 5.2. Yadé Kara 205 5.2.1. Selam Berlin 205 Chapter 6 Gish Jen and Sigrid Nunez: Approaches to Chinese American Identity 227 6.1. Gish Jen 229 6.1.1. Mona in the Promised Land 231 6.2. Sigrid Nunez 248 6.2.1. A Feather on the Breath of God 249 Chapter 7 Conclusions 273 Works Cited Primary Works 291 Secondary Works 291 vii Acknowledgements I am grateful to the College of the Liberal Arts and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at The Pennsylvania State University for awarding me their Dissertation Support Grants and Fellowships in the Spring and the Summer of 2006, respectively. Their financial assistance provided me with the time and resources to carry out research and dedicate all of my energy to my dissertation. I have been fortunate to work under the tutelage of first-rate scholars who readily and generously gave their time to assist me with my dissertation. I am deeply appreciative of the undying support of the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at The Pennsylvania State University, for their investment in my professional development, for the amazing teaching and learning opportunities that they have made possible, and for providing me with the necessary tools to complete my doctoral degree and pursue my professional goals. I would especially like to thank Professor Caroline D. Eckhardt for being the most capable and caring department head. I would also like to express my sincere gratefulness to my committee members Professors Sophia A. McClennen, Djelal Kadir, Bettina Mathes, and Véronique M. Fóti. Professor Sophia A. McClennen, my committee chair and adviser, deserves special mention here. Throughout my graduate career, she has been a conscientious, generous, and responsive mentor as well as a source of intellectual stimulation for me. Her writing strategies helped me organize, focus, and channel my thoughts in a meaningful way. She is an impressive scholar and for her incredible insight and dedication, I will be eternally grateful. viii I would like to thank Professor Djelal Kadir, a scholar who I admire for his intellectual, professional, and personal engagement with students. Both his careful reading and insightful comments on all of my written work as well as his willingness to make himself available for discussion have been a constant source of motivation throughout my time at Penn State. To Professor Bettina Mathes I would like to express my gratitude for her expertise as a feminist thinker, her readiness to engage with my intellectual concerns, and her forward thinking. My committee would not have been complete without the dedication and theoretical insight of Professor Véronique M. Fóti, and for this I thank her. Throughout my life as a graduate student at Penn State, I have also profited from the invaluable support from the office staff in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures. I would like to genuinely thank Irene Grassi for her marvelous humor, her contagious laughter, her endless patience with all my questions, and for always doing the right thing at the right time. For their continuous willingness to help and their kind encouragement whenever I needed it, my appreciation also goes to Bonnie Rossman, Cindy Bierly, JoElle DeVinney, Lynn Setzler, Mona Muzzio, and Sharon Laskowsky. You all are amazing! My life in the Department of Comparative Literature and at Penn State has been made enjoyable by the support of the many friends I have found here. I would like to acknowledge the friendship of Nathan P. Devir, Nicole L. Sparling, and Deberniere J. Torrey for simply being there and their willingness to listen. Last but not least, for his commitment and kindness to all graduate students in the Department of Comparative Literature, my appreciation goes to the graduate program coordinator Professor Thomas ix O. Beebee. His humor, presence, and kind words made many stressful situations more bearable. I know that I am not alone in my appreciation for his genuine care and concern for the well-being of graduate students. Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to Anna- Danielle and Christina-Vanessa, my two driving forces. Without your strength, generosity, and support, this project would never have been possible: ich danke Euch! 1 Chapter 1 Preliminaries ―Between two worlds‖ as an explanatory model does more to assuage anxieties about worlds, nations, and cultures in flux than it does to grasp the cultural innovations that migration engenders. Leslie A. Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature 5. Essentialist pictures of culture represent ―cultures‖ as if they were natural givens, entities that existed neatly distinct and separate in the world, entirely independent of our projects of distinguishing them. Uma Narajan, ―Essence of Culture and the Sense of History‖ 86.1 Let us accept history as it is, always dirty and entangled, and not run after supposed identities. Even the gods of Olympus, who appear as archetypes of Greek identity, were far from being pure, contaminated as they were by Egyptian and Asiatic divinities.