UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Re-thinking the immigrant narrative in a global perspective : representations of labor, gender and im/migration in contemporary cultural productions Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7kd5n568 Author Mata, Irene Publication Date 2007 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Re -thinking the Immigrant Narrative in a Global Perspective: Representations of Labor, Gender and Im/migration in Contemporary Cultural Productions A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requireme nt s for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Irene Mata Committee in charge: Professor Rosaura Sánchez, Chair Professor Michael Davidson Professor Jorge Huerta Professor Lisa Lowe Professor Shelley Streeby 2007 Copyright Irene Mata, 2007 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Irene Mata is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm. Chair University of California , San Diego 2007 iii DEDICATION Par a mi madre , Irene Martinez de Mata . iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………… .. ……… ….iii Dedication………………………………………………………………… .... ..iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………… …... …v Acknowledgements……………………………………………………… ... ....vi Vita……………………………………… ……………………………… ... ... vii i Abstract……………………………………………………………… .. ... ……ix Introduction………………………………………………………… .…… .….1 Chapter One : Up by Their Bootstraps or Can you D ance the Spanglish Lambada in the Barrio, Pocho?: The Immigrant Narrative Across Time, Place and Gender in Pocho , Barrio Boy , Spanglish and The Forbidden Dance is the Lambada .……………………………………………………. ... 25 Chapter Two : Alternative Narratives: Representations of Domestic Labor and Immigration in the Southwest .. ………………………………………. ... 71 Chapte r Three : “Ab ove All…Strive to be Invisible.” From the Suburbs to the Hotel: Representations of Domestic Labor in the Northeast U.S ………12 4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 18 1 References.. ………………………………… ……………………………... 19 1 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Department of Literature for helping to fund my research and writing. I would like to acknowledge all of the help and guidance from my committee members . Thank you to Lisa Lowe for sharing her vast knowledge o f immigration and literature with me and for making teaching so enjoyable. To Shelley Streeby, many thanks for helping me develop an understanding of American Studies and making the study of the canon so much more enjoyable. My deepest gratitude to Micha el Davidson for his encouragement and for introducing me to the literature of the Popular Front. Mil gracias to Jorge Huerta who, with his boundless enthusiasm and generous spirit, always made sure my education in Chicana/o Teatro extended beyond the clas sroom through his many sponsored trips to cultural events . I would especially like to thank the chair of my committee, Rosaura Sánchez , for six years of unwavering support and tireless mentoring and for teaching me the importance of responsible scholarshi p and activism. Regardless of the many challenges I encountered in graduate school, she always made me believe I could handle it all. My sincerest gratitude to her for providing me with a model of what a Chicana in academia can accomplish. A very warm thank you to the staff of the Literature Departm ent —Ana, Thom, Patricia, and Lu cinda —for helping me successfully maneuver the endless red tape of graduate school . Thanks for your willingness to help me with everything from making copies to setting up depa rtment events. I would like to thank my wonderful family for always being there for me and vi giving me the motivation to keep going when I felt exhausted. To my partner Ryan, thanks for holding me up through the rough times and selflessly offering me all that you have to give and more. To my children, Alyssa and Jaime, who constantly remind me of what is really important in life and for making the journey so much more enjoyable . You all inspire me to want to make the world a better place. Thank you to my family in Texas , who has always supported me and helped me survive my very rough undergrad years. To my father, Ernesto, gracias por todo papi, I couldn’t have done it without you and my mother by my side. Thank you to my sisters, Tina and Mari, for their friendship and their unconditional love . Many thanks to my family in Fresno, Nancy and Terry, for all of your support. Y our belief in me and your warm embrace into the family mean more to me than words can ever express . To my best friend and sister in crime, Chris Guzaitis, thank you for helping me survive grad school. You have been the village that has helped raise my children and you have filled the absence that leaving my sisters left in my soul. I will always cherish our many shopping excursio ns —thanks for introducing me to the joys of designer shoes. My deepest gratitude to my friend and mentor Rita Urquijo Ruiz — your advice and your friendship have been invaluable to me . The guidance you have provided me with has helped me finish this disser tation. Finally, thank you to my comadres —Marla, Myrna, and Lorena —and to my good friends Axel and Tina, for making my time at UCSD so much more exciting. vii VITA 1999 Bachelor of Arts, New Mexico State University 2001 Master of Arts, New Mexico State Unive rsity 2007 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “Maquiladoras,” in Latinas in the United States: An Historical Encyclopedia . Edited by Virginia Sanchez Korrol and Vicki L. Ruiz (420 -421). Paideia III , ed. with Rebe cca Blackwell and Gina Hochhalter. St. Paul: EMC/Paradigm Press, 2001. FIELD OF STUDY Major Field: Literature SELECTED AWARDS, GRANTS, & HONORS: UC San Diego Literature Department Year Long Dissertation Fellowship, 2006 -2007 Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity Disserta tion Research Fellowship, 2005 Hispanic Scholarship Fund Recipient, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 Verna Newman Rule Endowed Memorial Scholarship, 2000 Charles M. and Pamela S. Sphar Endowed Scholarship, 1999 Commission on Hig her Education Graduate Fellowship, 1999 -2000 viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Re -thinking the Immigrant Narrative in a Global Perspective: Representations of Labor, Gender and Im/migration in Contemporary Cultural Productions by Irene Mata Docto r of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego 2007 Professor Rosaura Sánchez, Chair This dissertation project comes out of an interest in labor and gender and the ways in which laboring bodies, specifically those of female domestic workers, are represented in cultural productions. One of the most popular means of portraying immigrant workers is through the employment of the hegemonic immigrant story, an anachronistic narrative that continues to be perpetuated both in cultural produ ctions and in the general debate about immigration. The hegemonic immigrant narrative is based on a storyline of progress that redeploys the constructed binary between the ix country of origin and the host country. The introduction argues for a different w ay of reading immigrant narratives that deconstructs such a binary in order to situate the new immigrant narrative as occurring under a world -system, in which the movement of people across constructed national boundaries is no longer situated between spati ally and temporally differentiated areas, but instead is seen as taking pla ce within a global system —one based on various economic and political relationships. The cultural productions in the dissertation provide varying representations of immigration and domestic labor and include works of literature and film. The first chapter looks at the ways in which the hegemonic immigrant narrative has been employed by two canonical Chicano texts and two contemporary films in order to trace the perpetuation of the myth of upward mobility and assimilation. Chapter two provides an analysis of alternative narratives written by Latina writers that challenge the ideological containment of the traditional story of migration. The third chapter continues to focus on repre sentations of domestic labor, but also includes the labor performed in the public sphere of the hotel industry. Ultimately, this dissertation is interested in looking at the ways in which cultural productions are using representations of labor and immigrat ion to alter the narrative of immigration that continues to perpetuate ideas of success and assimilation. Cultural productions about marginalized immigrant communities whose immigrant experiences are not necessarily stories of progress serve to disarticul ate the dominant immigrant narrative and ensure the visibility of immigrant patterns that have influenced the formation of the U.S. as a heterogeneous nation. x Introduction The issue of immigration is one of the most visible topics of discussion in the national arena, with everyone from right -wing Republican Pat Buchanan to California farmers offering their opinion. In Arizona, one of the states most affected by the influx of undocumented immigrants into the U.S., the Arizona Daily Star , a Tucson - based n ewspaper, sent an investigative team along the nearly 2,000 mile U.S./Mexico border in an attempt to provide their readers with an understanding of the issues surrounding the immigration debate. Their on -line four -part series, entitled “Sealing Our Border