UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Dominicanas presentes : gender, migration, and history's legacy in Dominican literature Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/85b060x5 Author Ramirez, Dixa Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Dominicanas Presentes: Gender, Migration, and History’s Legacy in Dominican Literature A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Dixa Ramírez Committee in charge: Professor Sara Johnson, Chair Professor Robin Derby Professor Fatima El-Tayeb Professor Misha Kokotovic Professor Nancy Postero 2011 Copyright Dixa Ramirez, 2011 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Dixa Ramírez is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my committee—Professor Sara Johnson, Professor Lauren Derby, Professor Fatima El-Tayeb, Professor Milos Kokotovic, and Professor Nancy Postero—for their support and invaluable insight throughout this process. I am especially thankful to Professors Johnson and Derby for their editing suggestions. And a deep thanks to Professor Johnson for offering her encouragement, advice, dedication, and mentorship, which guided me from the very beginning. I would also like to dedicate this dissertation to my family: my parents, Dixa D’Oleo- Tejeda and José Ramírez Valdez, my brother José A. Ramírez, my stepfather Darío Tejeda, and my grandparents, Deidamia D’Oleo and Julio Santana. Thank you for your encouragement and for celebrating my love of books. I also thank the friends who have given me emotional support, love, and much laughter throughout this process. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………… iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………... iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………….... v List of Figures………………………………………………………………. vii Vita………………………………………………………………………….. viii Abstract…………………………………………………………………….. x Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 1 Listening to Salomé Ureña: Dominican National Identity and Geographical Displacement in Canonical and Marginalized Literature Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………………. 10 Historical Context…………………………………………………………………………………… 17 Chapter Breakdown…………………………………………………………………………………. 28 Chapter One.………………………….………..…………………………… 36 Letters to an Absence: A Dominican Women’s Literary Genealogy Chapter Two.……….………………………………………………………. 73 Eliding History in Three Trujillo Memoirs Chapter Three..…………………………………………….……………… 116 Magic and Patriarchal Legacy in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Viriato Sención’s They Forged the Signature of God Haiti, Power and Magic……………………………………………………………………………. 120 Patriarchal Anxiety and Men of the Occult…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 137 Juanito the Rooster in the City: Masculinity in the Diaspora…………………………………. 148 Chapter Four..…………………………………………….………………… 153 Transnationalism in Contemporary Dominican Literature From Intergenerational Struggle to African Diaspora Consciousness……………………… 159 The Transnationalism of Dominican Sex Workers……………………………………………… 175 The Enduring Power of the Patriarch…………………………………………………………… 186 Conclusion …………………………………………….…………………… 195 Dominican Women Writers in the Global Marketplace v Works Consulted ………………………………………….………………. 210 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Rare photograph of Salomé Ureña…………………………….. 40 Figure 1.2: Common retouched image of Salomé Ureña…………………... 41 Figure 1.3: Bust of Salomé Ureña………………………………………….. 41 vii VITA EDUCATION: 2011 Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature University of California, San Diego 2004 Bachelor of Arts, Comparative Literature Brown University ACADEMIC POSITIONS: 2011 Lecturer: “Tourism and the Modern Traveler” English Department University of San Diego 2007 – 2008, 2010 Instructor: “Advanced Writing and Research: Tourism and the Modern Traveler” Muir College Writing Program University of California, San Diego 2009 – 2009 Teaching Assistant: Multi-Ethnic US Literatures Sequence Chicano, Asian American, and African American Literatures Literature Department University of California, San Diego 2007 Instructor: “Advanced Writing and Research: Virgins, Vamps, Criminals, and Flappers.” Muir College Writing Program University of California, San Diego 2005 – 2007 Instructor: “Introduction to Critical Writing” Muir College Writing Program University of California, San Diego SELECTED AWARDS: 2010 – 2011 Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Mellon Mays University Fellows Dissertation Grant 2009 One-quarter Literature Department Dissertation Fellowship 2009 Latino Studies Research Institute Grant viii 2009 Mellon Mays University Fellows Travel and Research Grant 2009 Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies Dissertation Grant 2005 – 2008 Annual Predoctoral Social Science Research Council Grant Recipient 2002 – 2004 Mellon Undergraduate Minority Fellow ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Dominicanas Presentes: Gender, Migration, and History’s Legacy in Dominican Literature by Dixa Ramírez Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2011 Professor Sara Johnson, Chair This dissertation argues that geographical displacement has partly defined Dominican national identity as constructed in literary discourses since the country’s founding. This entanglement between migration or exile and the nation is most evident in the work of marginalized subjects, including men in the diaspora and women, due to their tenuous relationship to the nation. Each chapter provides a different angle on this issue through several genealogies of alternative, non-patriarchal visions of the Dominican literary and intellectual tradition. My readings of these texts, which include the poetry and epistolary of a nineteenth-century female poet, two recent novels written in the US by Dominican men, an essay that conveys the overlaps between African and Dominican diaspora subjectivities, and popular news from the Dominican Republic and the US, x challenge the notion that traditional Dominican nationalism is based on the union between the woman/Land and the man/People in Latin American national romances. The first chapter charts a matrilineal genealogy starting with nineteenth-century poet Salomé Ureña based on the idea of “absence”—the absence of many Dominicans from the homeland and a missing readership that can truly appreciate the work of excluded subjects—as the unifying thread between Ureña and future Dominican women writers. The second chapter proposes that memoirs by three Trujillo descendants rely on problematic historical erasures and domesticate Trujillo as a kindly pater familias in order to elide his cruelty as the nation’s patriarch. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, chapter three argues that Trujillo’s power was so exorbitant that only the language of the supernatural can adequately describe it. It focuses on two recent novels written in the diaspora and notes that Trujillo’s and other leaders’ seemingly occult power is intrinsically patriarchal. The fourth chapter focuses on recent works by Dominican women writers that comment on the various kinds of transnationalism that have transformed the country. I show that, though transnationalism can be liberatory and subversive, it can also reinforce the patriarchal underpinnings of the nation. Finally, the conclusion meditates on how works by Dominican women writers are published and disseminated within national, regional, and global contexts. xi Introduction Listening to Salomé Ureña: Dominican National Identity and Geographical Displacement in Canonical and Marginalized Literature During the 1887 graduation ceremony of the Instituto de Señoritas/Young Women’s Institute in Santo Domingo, six young women were awarded the degree of Maestras Normales/Normal School Teachers, which was a first for women in the country and for much of Latin America at the time. The various speeches presented at the ceremony reveal a tension between the traditional role of women as mothers of future (male) citizens and a progressive role for women alongside men in the public sphere. Salomé Ureña, the school’s founder, recited the poem “Mi ofrenda a la patria”/My Offering to the Fatherland. The poem suggests that, in order for the nation to flourish, women’s education must be a priority: Hágase luz en la tiniebla oscura que el femenil espíritu rodea, y en sus alas de amor irá segura del porvenir la salvadora idea. Y si progreso y paz e independencia mostrar al orbe tu ambición ansía, fuerte, como escudada en su conciencia, de sus propios destinos soberana, para ser del hogar lumbrera y guía formemos la mujer dominicana (Ureña, Poesías completas 147-8). Let there be light in the darkness that surrounds the feminine spirit, and in her loving wings the freeing idea will go sure of the future. And if progress and peace and independence your ambition yearns to show the world, strong, as if shielded in her conscience, master of her own destiny, 1 2 to become the home’s genius and guide let us educate the Dominican woman.1 Ureña uses words like “light,” “freeing,” independence” and “ambition” to connect the nation’s and women’s progress and independence. The graduating students presented a thesis entitled “La educación de la mujer”/Women’s Education, reflecting many of the ideals in