The Construction of Hybrid Identities in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine and Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Turan Kolukirik S1914049 Supervisor: Dr. J.C. Kardux Second Reader: Prof.dr. P.T.M.G. Liebregts June 19, 2019 English Literature and Culture Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities Kolukirik 2 Table of contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………3 Chapter 1: Theoretical FrameWork……………………………………………………………6 Chapter 2: “So We Can Rebirth Ourselves in the Images of Dreams”: Identity Transformations and the Limits of Assimilation in Jasmine…………...……….12 Chapter 3: Revisiting the Past to Reconcile with the Present: Bicultural Identity (Re)construction in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents………...………..31 3.1: Carla, Sandra, and Sofía………………………………………….…………35 3.2: Yolanda…………………………………………………………….……….50 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..…….62 Works cited………………..………………………………………………………..….…….65 Kolukirik 3 Introduction In an era of globalization, our contemporary World is characterized by “unparalleled mobility, migration, and border crossing” and concurrent “clashes, meetings, fusions and intermixings” of cultures (Moslund 1-2). Literature attests to and critically reflects on globalization and migration. As Fatemeh Pourjafari and Abdolali Vahidpour point out, in immigration literature, protagonists “endlessly recreate [themselves] through [their] encounters with cultural complexities and discriminating experience of being a minority” (686). Immigrant identities are constructed through a constant process of negotiation betWeen the old and neW cultures. In relation to the formation of identities in the context of intercultural encounters, Homi K. Bhabha theorizes the concept of cultural hybridity in his influential book The Location of Culture (1994). Immigrant and other minority groups often find themselves in an in-betWeen, liminal space betWeen cultures (Rutherford 211). Though this position often produces conflict and anxiety, Bhabha argues that this “interstitial passage betWeen fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference Without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (Location 5): the “process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a neW area of negotiation of meaning and representation,” which he calls “the Third Space” (Rutherford 211, emphasis added). In relation to cultural hybridity, he also elaborates on Fanon’s concept of “mimicry,” which he calls “the affect of hybridity.” Mimicry itself refers to the ways in Which the colonized imitate the dominant culture’s traits in an attempt to attain the position of power associated with that dominant culture or, more drastically and subversively, attempt to subvert the power dynamics betWeen the colonizer and the colonized by asserting their hybrid identity in the Third Space (Bhabha, “Signs” 162). Taking Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity and mimicry as a point of departure, this thesis will analyze and compare the construction of hybrid identities in Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine (1989) and Julia Alvarez’s novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Kolukirik 4 (1991). Forced and voluntary migration is a prominent theme in both of these works and leads to identity conflicts that the main characters resolve in different ways. The female protagonists in these Works, who are all first-generation immigrants, feel that they belong neither fully to (the culture of) their native country nor their host country and struggle with negotiating their identities in the liminal space in-betWeen the tWo cultures. In Jasmine, the protagonist leaves India for the United States after her husband’s death and adopts multiple hybrid identities in her struggle for survival and the gradual process of Americanization. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents tells the story of the hardships faced by the four García sisters after their family is forced to leave the Dominican Republic to live in NeW York. The novel focuses on the difficulties they face trying to reconcile their family-oriented and male- dominated native culture and individualistic American culture and its changing gender norms. Reading both novels in the context of Bhabha’s theoretical concepts of the Third Space, mimicry, and hybridity, I will argue that while the protagonists in both of these works develop characteristics of hybrid identities to a certain extent, there are differences in the role mimicry and hybridity play in each of them. In Jasmine, mimicry, rather than contributing to the construction of an ultimately hybrid identity, seems to be part of a process which eventually leads to the protagonist’s assimilation into the host culture. Similarly, in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, mimicry also plays an important role in the four sisters’ cultural adjustments. However, while most of the characters in this novel seem to remain in a liminal space of unresolved conflict regarding their identities, particularly Yolanda seems to find a way to construct a form of hybridity for herself. In my close analysis of these novels, I will examine the construction and representation of hybrid identities in relation to migration. In the first chapter, I will provide a theoretical frameWork by discussing Bhabha’s postcolonial theory on cultural hybridity. I Will specifically focus on the Third Space and colonial mimicry regarding cultural hybridity Kolukirik 5 and its significance in relation to American immigrant literature. In the following tWo chapters, I will apply Bhabha’s theoretical concepts in my comparative close analysis of Jasmine and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, focusing on the different ways in Which cultural identities are constructed and represented in these novels. Kolukirik 6 Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework Hybridity is a term often used to refer to “the creation of neW transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization” (Ashcroft et al. 118). Bhabha’s particular discussion of cultural hybridity, grounded in post-colonialism, avoids what he calls “that very simplistic polarity betWeen the ruler and the ruled” (Rutherford 220) and instead focuses on “the interdependence and mutual construction of subjectivities” in the context of “colonizer/colonized relations” (Ashcroft et al. 118). While Bhabha’s theories regarding cultural hybridity are originally set in a post-colonial context, their use can also be extended to immigration literature because, similarly to colonized people, “migrants are predominantly positioned at the margins of society and are subject to the hegemonial claims of the majority” (Pourjafari and Vahidpour 685). In the context of this thesis, it is important to note that although Mukherjee’s and Alvarez’s novels evidently deal with migration, they are, to some extent, also lent a postcolonial character because of India’s (British) colonial past and the United States’ “neo-colonial relationship” with the Dominican Republic throughout much of the tWentieth century (Morín 131). In his analysis of cultural hybridity, Bhabha repeatedly discusses cultural difference and ambivalence in relation to the concepts of the Third Space, mimicry, and hybridity. In order to provide a clear theoretical frameWork for my analysis of the three novels in the following chapters, these concepts will now be discussed in more detail. Bhabha’s theory on cultural hybridity suggests that “all cultural statements and systems” (Ashcroft et al. 118) are created in the “Third Space of enunciation” (Bhabha, “Commitment” 22). To describe this Third Space betWeen tWo different cultures, Bhabha uses the metaphor of a stairwell: The stairwell as a liminal space, in-betWeen the designations of identity, becomes the process of symbolic interaction, the connective tissue that constructs the difference Kolukirik 7 betWeen upper and lower, black and White. The hither and thither of the stairwell, the temporal movement and passage that it allows, prevents identities at either end of it from settling into primordial polarities. The interstitial passage betWeen fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference Without an assumed or imposed hierarchy. (Location 5) This Third Space described above is where cultural hybridity takes place and is therefore home to “the liminal figure of the hybrid” (Moosavinia and Hosseini 336). Fetson Kalua points out that “[b]y grounding his version of postcolonialism in liminality or the Third Space, Bhabha is able to contextualize the vexed nature of the post-colonial condition and provide a counterpoint to identity issues” (25). The liminal Third Space betWeen cultures can thus become a space of empowerment for the colonized Where “the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity” (Bhabha, “Commitment” 21). As a consequence of this characteristic, Bhabha argues that “[t]hese in-betWeen spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular or communal – that initiate neW signs of identity” (Location 2). Richard Bower draWs attention to the “ambiguous” nature of this in-betWeen space Where “social agency [is] created when individuals connect, interact and react with one another” (488). The Third Space becomes “the precondition for the articulation of cultural difference,” which, in turn, creates the ambivalence Which is a crucial characteristic of cultural hybridity (Bhabha, “Commitment” 22). Ultimately, the Third Space “displaces the histories that