UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title De lo m?s lindo y de lo m?s pobre: Transnational Borges and Sandra Cisneros Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h36f33x Author Harris, Audrey A. Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles De lo más lindo y de lo más pobre: Transnational Borges and Sandra Cisneros A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures by Audrey Harris 2016 © Copyright by Audrey Harris 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION De lo más lindo y de lo más pobre: Transnational Borges and Sandra Cisneros by Audrey Harris Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Héctor Calderón, Chair This dissertation examines the influence of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges on the writings of twenty-first century Mexican American author Sandra Cisneros, as well as how reading her work helps us better understand overlooked elements of his writings, including marginality, gender roles, sexuality and the rights to self-definition, agency and self-expression of women and women writers. Though Cisneros is one of the most popular women writers in the United States, the first Chicana writer to be published by a major New York publishing house and an important influence for a new generation of writers, she has been dismissed by many critics as not a serious writer, or primarily a testimonial writer. By linking her writing with Borges, I present her as a United States descendent of the Latin American literary tradition that gained worldwide acclaim during the so-called Latin American literary boom of the 1960s. This dissertation departs from representations of Cisneros as ii solely a Chicana writer linking her instead to a north-south transnational, transborder literary tradition. As we shall see in this dissertation, for decades Borges has been a literary companion at Cisneros’s side. From Cisneros’s interviews, we know that she had first read Borges beginning in high school in the late 1960s; her most recent publication, a collection of essays entitled A House of My Own (2015) features references to Borges as a major influence on her work. In a 2015 interview, Cisneros said that Borges “me dio permiso para combinar mitos y sueños y cuentos de hadas en mis cuentos.” T.S. Eliot, speaking on literary relationships across time in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” asserts, “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past” (Sacred Wood 50). This dissertation will also examine how reading Cisneros—both her fictions and essays in which she directly references her readings of Borges’s work—in turn alters the way we read Borges. Additionally, it considers how themes raised in this early twentieth-century Argentine male writer’s work develop and change in Cisneros’s late twentieth and early twenty-first century Mexican American female imagination. These themes include gender role reversal during the advent of feminism and the emergence of women in the workplace in the twentieth century; popular and marginalized cultures; personal and collective identities; cultural hybridity and bilingualism. This dissertation is comprised of four thematic comparative chapters that contribute to new understandings of both Borges and Cisneros. CHAPTER ONE begins the dissertation with the influence of the poetry and prose in Borges’s Dreamtigers (1964) on Cisneros’s highly acclaimed The House on Mango Street (1984). CHAPTER TWO has an urban studies focus through the literary representations of two Latin American capitals, Buenos Aires in Borges’s “Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires” (1923) and Mexico City in Cisneros’s Caramelo (2002). CHAPTER THREE is a reconsideration of Borges’s female-centered writings, including his translations of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) and A Room of One’s Own (1929), through Sandra Cisneros’s writings and iii feminism. CHAPTER FOUR assesses elements of Buddhist spirituality in Cisneros’s twenty-first century writings gained in part through Borges’s writings on Buddhism near the end of his life. The dissertation will demonstrate that Borges remains Cisneros’s most important literary maestro with his influence felt in her poetry, fiction, and essays from adolescence in the 1960s through her recent A House of My Own (2015). iv The dissertation of Audrey Harris is approved. Verónica Cortínez Efraín Kristal María Cristina Pons Héctor Calderón, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 The Dance CHAPTER ONE 11 De lo más lindo y de lo más pobre: Writing the Self and the Other in Dreamtigers and The House on Mango Street CHAPTER TWO 45 Borges and Cisneros in the City: From the Margins to the Center CHAPTER THREE 80 Feminizing Borges: In the Company of Leonor Acevedo Suárez, Virginia Woolf, and Sandra Cisneros CHAPTER FOUR 121 In Search of the Latin American Buddha CONCLUSION 166 Hacia el Norte y el Sur vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First I would like to thank the Chair of my committee, Héctor Calderón, for his constant dedication, support, encouragement and the inspiration he has given me from the inception of this project. ‘Una gravitación familiar’ nos llevó a conocernos y a trabajar juntos, of that I am sure! Thank you, Profe, for believing in me, even when I doubted myself. I am so excited to work together next year at UCLA. Thanks also to my distinguished committee, who demonstrated to me what a wonderful place UCLA is for studying Latin American and Chicano literature: Verónica Cortínez, Efraín Kristal, and María Cristina Pons. I am deeply grateful to the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, the Graduate Division and the Latin American Institute at UCLA for generously supporting my research through grants, fellowships and teaching assistantships over the years. In particular, the Graduate Summer Research Mentorship allowed me to spend the summer of 2015 writing and researching in Mexico City. Helen and Rue Pine have also contributed generously to travel funds for research in Mexico; many many thanks. Acknowledgements are also in order to Gloria Tovar, for patiently and graciously guiding me through all administrative aspects of this process over these last few years. To Adriana Bergero, for introducing me to “Emma Zunz” and Borges’s Buenos Aires, ¡gracias! To Roberta Johnson, I am deeply grateful for the many letters of support and for your gracious encouragement from the beginning, particularly of my writings on women and feminism. To Juanita Heredia whose dissertation, Latina Writers in the United States: At the Borderlands of a Pan-American Boom (1998) provided a path to follow for my own work. To Alejandro Pelayo, for giving me such a wonderful welcome to the cultural life of Mexico City, for pushing me to finish, and for inspiring me with your deep love of teaching and scholarship. Thanks to William Bodiford, of the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and to vii Ariel Rodriguez Kuri, in the History Department of the Colegio de México, for sharing their expertise during interviews about, respectively, American Buddhism and the 20th century migratory history of Mexico City. To Nancy Kason Poulson, thank you for sending me a copy of your article on women in Borges. To Luce López-Baralt, for confirming my hunch over dinner that Borges was in his personal life and conversations as well as in his writings, deeply interested in Buddhist philosophy and mysticism. Thanks also to the librarians at UCLA’s Charles Young Research Library, for being an inexhaustible fount of help, good cheer and information, as well as the librarians at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin for opening your excellent Borges archive with me. My brilliant writing group also deserves a round of thanks. I only wish I had discovered you earlier, and I hope we will continue working together and supporting each other down the road! Kathy Carbone, thank you for inspiring me with your elegant writing and careful scholarship, as well as your knowledge of dance. Nathan Kish, I greatly appreciated reading Latin and German with you, and your insights into the classical references in this work. And Melissa Goodnight, thank you for your thoughts on Post-Colonial matters in my work as well as your kind but convincing manner of challenging me to deepen my thinking. To my friends and writing partners and fellow dissertation writers: Jessica Gordon- Burroughs for the coffee house writing sessions, Gabriela Venegas for being there in moments of stress, Isabel Gómez for your encouragement throughout, Lourdes Arévalo for believing me and inspiring me to pursue my dreams, Amber Bryant and Eilene Powell for being there from the beginning, Sandra Ruíz for leading the way in new readings of “Emma Zunz” as well as for your patient and helpful answers to my many questions during this process, likewise to Carolina González for answering questions and leading the way. To Zlatina Saldalska, thank you for prepping me for my defense and for helping me celebrate afterwards; I couldn’t ask for a better viii friend. To Jessica Stender and Chlöe Roddick, for helping me find a home in Mexico City, love you both! To George Haas, for telling me about your own experience of seeing Borges lecture in Chicago and for teaching me the fundamentals of Vipassana meditation. To Charlotte and Danielle, for encouraging me to keep pressing forward and for constantly reminding me to take care of myself during this process. And to Tim O’Connell at Vintage, for sending me the advanced copy of A House of My Own, many thanks once again.