SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... From the Plantation Zone: The Poetics of a Black Matrilineal Genealogy for the Americas A Dissertation Presented by Eileen S. Chanza Torres to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department (Transamerican Studies) Stony Brook University May 2013 Copyright by Eileen S. Chanza Torres 2013 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Eileen S. Chanza Torres We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Susan Scheckel – Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor, English Department E. Anthony Hurley – Dissertation Advisor Chair, Africana Studies Department Helen M. Cooper – Chairperson of Defense Emerita Professor, English Department Dawn P. Harris – Outside Reader Assistant Professor, Africana Studies Department This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Interim Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation From the Plantation Zone: The Poetics of a Black Matrilineal Genealogy for the Americas by Eileen S. Chanza Torres Doctor of Philosophy in English (Transamerican Studies) Stony Brook University 2013 In the Humanities, studies on the legacy of enslaved Black women are often split along ethnic, cultural, linguistic and national lines. My dissertation brings together literatures and visual arts from Puerto Rico, Martinique, Suriname, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. representing a myriad of linguistic and cultural traditions that turn to the legacy of the historical Black female body as their myth of creation. I position these works under the heading of Plantation Zone Literatures and Visual Arts, a term I use to indicate the centrality of Black women’s genealogy in 20th-century and 21st-century works from the Black Diaspora. Once a geographic space where Africans and their heirs were forced to labor, the Plantation Zone serves as a metaphorical site where the legacy of the historical Black female body—in multifarious forms of triumph and pain—is celebrated in Black Diasporic literatures. In this project I argue for a shift in the study of literatures of the Americas from a Eurocentric lineage that supports the European conquest of the New World, to an approach that locates the birth of the Americas in the history of the Plantation Zone. My methodology relies on an interdisciplinary model, with works from historians, ethnographers, sociologists and philosophers grounding my analysis of the epistemological confrontation that occurs when fictionalizing Black women. My intervention in the fields of Africana Studies, Caribbean Studies, Latina/o Studies and Transamerican Studies comes through examining how the friction between the real and the imagined offers new ways of thinking about literatures of the Americas through the matrilineal genealogy of the Black Diaspora. iii Pa’ mi mamá, Iris Torres Torres. iv Table of Contents List of Figures.................................................................................................................................vi Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................viii Introduction: A Secret Sharer in the House of English....................................................................1 Chapter 1 The Babelic Uterus of the New World and the Cult of Black Womanhood..................49 Chapter 2 The Poet Talks Black: Luis Palés Matos and the Problem of Whiteness in Trans- American Studies.........................................................................................................................114 Chapter 3 What We Talk About When We Talk About Black Love: Frantz Fanon, Boeli van Leeuwen, Joseph Zobel and Junot Díaz.......................................................................................152 Chapter 4 Into the American Abyss: Mad Black Girls in Kara Walker’s Tableaux.....................193 Conclusion: From the Plantation Zone, With Love.....................................................................221 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................228 v List of Figures 1 Fig. 1 Underwood & Underwood Firm, Human poverty amidst nature’s wealth – a beggar in Adjuntas Fig. 2 Ramón Frade, El pan nuestro Fig. 3 Kara Walker, Letter from a Black Girl Fig. 4 Auguste Edouart, A Group Silhouette Fig. 5 Auguste Edouart, South Sea Islanders Fig. 6 Kara Walker, World’s Exposition Fig. 7 Kara Walker, Gone: A Historical Romance of Civil War as it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of a Negress and her Heart Fig. 8 Kara Walker, Camptown Ladies Fig. 9 Kara Walker, Slavery, Slavery! Fig. 10 Petrus Paulus Rubens, Cimon and Pero Fig. 11 Dirk van Baburen, Cimon and Pero Fig. 12 Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Roman Charity Fig. 13 Kara Walker, An Abbreviated Emancipation (From the Emancipation Approximation) Fig. 14 Kara Walker, The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven Fig. 15 Kara Walker, An Abbreviated Emancipation (from The Emancipation Approximation) (detail) 1 As per my committee’s approval, the figures discussed in this project have been omitted due to copyright laws. vi Fig. 16 Kara Walker, An Abbreviated Emancipation (from The Emancipation Approximation) (detail) Fig. 17 Kara Walker, The Emancipation Approximation (scene 25) Fig. 18 Kara Walker, No mere words can Adequately reflect the Remorse this Negress feels at having been Cast into such a lowly state by her former Masters and so its with a Humble heart that she brings about their physical Ruin and earthly Demise Fig. 19 Jorge Pineda, Mambrú Fig. 20 Jorge Pineda, Sara Fig. 21 Jorge Pineda, Mónica Fig. 22 Jorge Pineda, Isabel II Fig. 23 Jorge Pineda, Claudia Fig. 24 Jorge Pineda, Quisqueya Fig. 25 Jorge Pineda, Belkis Fig. 26 Kara Walker, Untitled (Milk and Bread) vii Acknowledgments This project would not have been possible without the support of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the W. Burghardt Turner Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Dissertation Writing Seminar at Stony Brook University and the SSRC-Mellon Mays Proposal Writing and Dissertation Development Seminar. I cannot thank my committee enough for their encouragement over the years: Dr. Susan Scheckel, Dr. E. Anthony Hurley, Dr. Helen Cooper and Dr. Dawn P. Harris. One too many times I arrived at their doors with a feeling of doom, but their constant attention to this project, their criticism and their words of praise allowed me to find the strength to finish. ¡Gracias! I was trained by the best at The City College of New York. Thank you: Dr. Susan Besse, Dr. Lyn Di Iorio, Dr. Dulce M. García, Dr. Nickolas Pappas and Dr. H. Aram Veeser. The ladies of the H.O.D. were invaluable to this project. Emily Churilla, Rachel Ellis Neyra, Amy Falvey and Jacqueline Vigliotti filled 506 with intellectual fervor. Together with the honorary ladies of the H.O.D., Aliza Atik, Ashar Foley, Haseena Milea, Lauren Rosenblum and Rachel Walsh, and the honorary gentlemen, Juan Ariel Goméz and Jayson Pilapil Jacobo, we created a true tertulia where music, poetry, art and ideas flowed with each glass of wine, cup of coffee and diet Sunkist. viii Whenever I felt I was losing sight of this project I went home. Le doy gracias a dios por mi mama, Iris Torres Torres. Gracias por darme la vida, por hacerme puertorriqueña, por llenar el apartamento en el Bronx con el calor de Puerto Rico y por siempre creer en mi. I was lucky to have been born to a family of women. I have four sisters whose love and support is where I draw my strength. When I returned home at the age of eighteen my sisters Sandra and Mayra taught me how to listen once again to the rhythm of the Island. With coquís as our soundtrack, they brought back the forgotten gestures of my Puerto Rican self with a simple phrase, “te recuerdas...” My sister Nadia and her husband Humberto provided me with a room of my own and to a writer that is as good as gold. As if that wasn’t enough, they also gave me an amazing niece and nephew. When I was studying for my exams Arianna stacked up her picture books and read alongside me with pencil in hand. I can’t imagine my life without her brilliance and creativity. Nicholas was born the year I began graduate school. Although he looks like his father, his passion for knowledge and confident know it all attitude is pure Torres. My youngest sister Caridad was born in NYC. She, perhaps more than anyone else, best embodies the spirit of this project. Along with her beautiful daughters, Mia and Ami, Caridad reminds me to be thankful and to seguir pa’lante. ix Introduction: A Secret Sharer in the House of English The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don’t belong to English though I belong nowhere else —Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Bilingual Blues (1995) In the Humanities, studies on the legacy of enslaved Black women are often split along ethnic, cultural, linguistic and national lines. My dissertation, “From the Plantation Zone: The Poetics of a Black Matrilineal Genealogy