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Appropriating the Female Gaze in Esmeralda Santiago´S Autobiographical Writing Centro Journal, Vol Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of New York Estados Unidos Morales-Diaz, Enrique Catching glimpses: appropriating the female gaze in Esmeralda Santiago´s autobiographical writing Centro Journal, vol. XIV, núm. 2, 2002, pp. 131-147 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos Disponible en: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37711301007 Cómo citar el artículo Número completo Sistema de Información Científica Más información del artículo Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal Página de la revista en redalyc.org Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto CENTRO Journal Volume7 xiv Number 2 fall 2002 Catching Glimpses: Appropriating the Female Gaze in Esmeralda Santiago’s Autobiographical Writing Enrique Morales-Diaz ABSTRACT This article examines Esmeralda Santiago’s autobiographical writing. It also analyzes the appropriation of the conventional male gaze in order to reexamine various experiences focusing on the construction of the self. Santiago’s writing is a counter-stance against established patriarchal norms, based not only on expected female behaviors but also on behaviors related to the act of writing. By attempting to reconstruct her past, she undertakes a revolutionary act, creating an agency that formulates a feminine narrative, deconstructing at the same time the traditional views and theories of male-dominated autobiographical writing. [Key words: Female gaze, testimonial narrative, historical memory, Puerto Rican female identity, counter-discourse, deconstructing patriarchy] [ 131 ] In Almost a Woman (1998), Esmeralda Santiago makes an important observation, one that focuses on an interpretation of her relationship with men. In the process, she validates her autobiographical voyage through time and space and zeroes in on the appropriation of the male gaze. Toward the end of the sequel, When I Was Puerto Rican (1993), Santiago discusses the circumstances surrounding her relationship with Ulvi Dogan, a Turkish-born, German-speaking Muslim film director who established the parameters under which the protagonist was to remain by his side. She states: I wanted to be with him, so I attended to his lessons. When we were out, I was to mirror his movements, so as not to embarrass myself. I was to eat if he ate, with the utensil he used, to speak less and listen more, to withhold my opinions. He made me aware of my limitations, promised to help me overcome them. “You are poor girl with small mind,” he said once and repeated often. When he noticed I was offended, he explained that he meant not that I was stupid but that I was unsophisticated, because I’d been too well protected (Almost a Woman 305, italicized my emphasis). Her description of the behavior Ulvi expected from her and her willingness to accept his mandates undermined her mother’s warnings regarding men’s conduct toward women. Her mother reminded Santiago that men only wanted one thing from them. While the assumption is that female sexuality was at the center of masculine desire, her mother did everything in her power to protect Negi, to instill in her a sense of free will so that she might choose of her own volition. Santiago writes: “Mami told her friend Minga that a girl my age should be watched by her mother and protected from men who were sure to take advantage of a child in a woman’s body” (Almost a Woman 14). Ulvi’s treatment of Negi’s character as unsophisticated and his identification of her as an overprotected naïve girl echo in her mind as she realizes that she had to give up her developing identity as an adult woman in order to satisfy his desire and please him: “To be with him, I had to discard who I was and evolve into the woman he wanted to be with” (Almost a Woman 305). Thus, as her mother’s admonition echoes in her mind, she reflects upon this turning point in her life, a turning point heightened by the affirmation of her identity as a daughter and as a woman: “…I knew, just as Ulvi knew when he asked, that I’d already made my choice” (Almost a Woman 311). With the realization, then, that her relationship with her mother was stronger than the one she shared with Ulvi, it is central to the narration that she internalize her mother’s belief regarding men and at the same time allow herself to deconstruct her past experiences to understand her state as she narrates her life. Hence she establishes her writing as a voyage through time and space that contradicts traditional patriarchal expectations of women, to asserting herself as independent, someone capable of directing her own life. Santiago attempts to break with Trinh Minh-ha’s “triple bind,” which, based on the critic’s analysis, had become the basis by which many women writers of color were studied and categorized. Minh-ha writes: She who “happens to be” a (non-white) Third World member, a woman and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse of praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes (6). [ 132 ] In the writing of her two-part memoir Santiago’s focus differs even as she directs her thought toward a common leitmotif: a woman’s search for her own identity. When I Was Puerto Rican examines the life of a child through that very character’s gaze, exploring issues of male/female relationships, cultural/ethnic identity, and loss of family/home. Almost a Woman, on the other hand, exposes a more mature narration by the same protagonist, whose “adventures” into her identity challenge established norms by both patriarchal society and matriarchal family life. However, in both accounts Santiago (author/narrator) introduces Negi (protagonist) into a world of rebelliousness, experimentation, and subversion. bell hooks’ statement mirrors what becomes Santiago’s purpose in revisiting previous experiences. She postulates that: Subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that “looks” to document, one that is oppositional. In resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating “awareness” politicizes “looking” relations—one learns to look a certain way in order to resist (308). Therefore, Santiago’s writing of When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman contradicts traditionally male-oriented depictions of female roles. As with Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets (1967), and Edward Rivera’s Family Installments: Growing Up Hispanic (1982), Esmeralda Santiago’s autobiographical writing shares various similarities with traditional masculine-dominated narrations, such as those by Thomas and Rivera: they tell the story of family struggles to survive in a society “foreign” to their own Puerto Rican roots. They also narrate the coming of age of individuals influenced by cultural and geographical circumstances. At the same time the reader experiences the character’s voyage through the eyes of children and adult voices. While the commonalities between these highly acclaimed literary works enhance and strengthen established studies regarding the migratory experiences of Puerto Ricans to the United States from a literary perspective, there is one differentiation that ruptures any possibility of unification in terms of the narration: Thomas’ and Rivera’s scope of experience differs from that exposed by Santiago’s based on gender disparities. This difference in terms of agency will re-establish a dichotomy that will force the female characters present in the masculine oeuvre into gender-specific roles, echoed by Silvia Nagy-Zekmi (1996), who states that: el poder del varón sobre la mujer está arraigado en la cuestión del control sobre la capacidad reproductiva de la mujer, y, por extensión, sobre su conducta sexual. El ejercicio de este poder por el varón relega a la mujer al espacio doméstico (89). In Santiago’s memoirs the central focus will be to re-construct the traditional position that women, particularly Puerto Rican women, have often been forced and relegated to conform to. According to Katherine Gatto: The socio-political background of the Latina, characterized by oppression and deprivation in the guise of machismo, Catholicism, and family traditions (which have relegated her to the destiny of wife and mother, virgin or puta) has also circumscribed the construction of the Latina self (86). [ 133 ] Hence, Esmeralda Santiago writes to denounce the mandated gender dichotomy and establishes instead a platform from which others can speak and share their own experiences and development of their identities. The author breaks with the notion of categorizing women based on their relationship with phallogocentric society: MADRE (MONJA) VIRGEN FALO NO VIRGEN VIRGEN (MARÍA) NO MADRE (PROSTITUTA) MADRE (Nagy Zekmi 91) Santiago, through her storytelling style and recognizable goals, joins the ranks of earlier U.S. Latina writers such as Cherrie Moraga, Aurora Levins Morales and Rosario Morales, and Gloria Anzaldúa. What these writers share in common aside from their gender is that: They challenge traditional notions about the genre of “autobiography” through their form and their content. They subvert both Anglo and Latino patriarchal definitions of culture. They undermine linguistic norms by using a mixture of English, Spanish and Spanglish. All address the question of the politics of multiple identities from a position which seeks to integrate ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and language (Torres 276). By breaking with traditional literary forms, Santiago attempts to revisit experiences from her childhood in order to comprehend her narrative present. Through self- representation she gazes at her past, evoking subjective memories that will provide her with the answers she seeks. At the same time she becomes a subversive; she seizes “the podium” to speak through her own voice, “creating new images” that contradict and deconstruct conventional representations of the Latina (Torres 278), ceasing to identify her experiences in order to satisfy patriarchal expectations.
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