New Ways of Telling: Latinas' Narratives of Exile and Return Author(s): Jacqueline Stefanko Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1996), pp. 50-69 Published by: University of Nebraska Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3346592 Accessed: 21/08/2008 14:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=unp. 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For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org JacquelineStefanko New Ways of Telling: Latinas'Narratives of Exile and Return In the liminalityof this moment in history,when discourses,disciplines, and politics converge and contend with one another, when border-crossinghas become a site of resistantand liberatorypossibilities, I see Latin American womenwriting in the United Statesmapping out paradigmaticshifts in the ways we readand write.The work of JuliaAlvarez, Cristina Garcia, Rosario Morales, and Aurora Levins Morales revealsthe processesof migrant souls, weaving togetherthe threadsof memory,history, and narrationat the crossroadsof femi- nisms,postcolonialisms, and socialisms.At the same time, these authors'works highlightthe interculturalquestions of identitythat emergeat these crossroads. Eachof thesewomen writersis a worldtraveler, having emigrated or been exiled from a LatinAmerican country to the United Stateswith the processof return 1 an ever-present,physical and/or textual possibility. These authorsuse theirskills and experiencesas world travelersto take us "to placesof subjectivitythat shift and hyphenateinto the worldsof others."2 As EdwardSaid remindsus, "exile, immigrationand the crossingof boundariesare experiences that can ... provide us with new narrativeforms or, in John Berger'sphrase, with otherways of tell- ing."3 I proposeto readJulia Alvarez's In the Timeof the Butterfliesand How the GarciaGirls Lost Their Accents, Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban,and Rosa- rio Moralesand AuroraLevins Morales's GettingHome Alive as new ways of telling.As hybridselves who crossand recrossborders of languageand culture, these Latinawriters create hybrid texts in orderto "survivein diaspora,"to use Donna Haraway'sterm, seeking to heal the fracturesand rupturesresulting from exile and dispersal.4Polyphonic narration, permeable borders (between genres,among national identifications,in the dialecticof self and other), and negotiationof the gesturesof whatJames Clifford calls "traveling/dwelling"are 5 the attributesthat distinguishthese texts as new ways of telling. Migration Copyright? 1996 by FrontiersEditorial Collective 50 JacquelineStefanko becomesthe means by which memoriesare narratedin specifichistorical con- texts, infusing the empty/open/silentspaces in history, discourses,and politics with resistantand alternativeparadigms. As migrantsouls traveling/dwellingin diversecultural spaces, Latina writ- ers become embeddedwithin the processof translation,the linguistic border- crossingthat necessarilyaccompanies any other shifts acrossboundaries. If we considertranslation to be an alterationin signification,an act of decentering one's self and playingwith language,then to translatemay be the Derridean "affirmationof the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmationof a world of signswithout fault,without truth, and without origin which is offeredto an activeinterpretation."6 Translation enables the authorto perceivethe occluded fiction of a stable center, the fictive purity of self-pres- ence, while simultaneouslyenabling her to enter into dialogueswith the multi- ple aspectsof self revealedthrough displacement. As Latinasand feminists,the authorsrealize, as Harawayhas observed,that "releasingthe play of writing is deadlyserious." Haraway explains that the "poetryand storiesof U.S. women of color are repeatedlyabout writing,about accessto the power to signify, but this time that power must be neither phallic nor innocent."7 Morales and Levins Morales'ssuggestive title, GettingHome Alive, indicates an awareness and negotiationof the messinessof playingwith languageand of the power of writingas boundary-crossingwhere the terrainis impure,anomalous, unstable, and potentiallyhazardous. Due to the shifting, unstable terrain they inhabit, Latin American (migrant)women writersquestion and reject the assumptionthat a unitary, synthesizingnarrator is capable of telling the stories they have to disclose, insteadopting for a narrativestance that includesmultiple voicings. Their utili- zation of multiple narratorscontributes to the critiquethat "the theory of the subject of consciousnessas a unitaryand synthesizingagent of knowledge is alwaysalready a postureof domination."8Polyphonic narration is one mode of crossingthe thresholdinto the anomalous,impure, and unstable.That crossing enables the readerand writer to participatein the breakingdown of con- structed,pure boundariesand to engage in complex heterogeneousdialogues. Telling the story of three generationsof Cuban women and their experiences with revolutionand immigrationin Dreamingin Cuban,Cristina Garcia uti- lizes a mixtureof third person character-specificnarrators, first person narra- tors, and epistolary interjections to convey the rich texture of subject positionalitiesand the multipleworlds where the subjectof consciousnesstrav- els. JuliaAlvarez explores throughout How the GarciaGirls Lost TheirAccents the effectsof heterotopicalityupon four sisterstraveling/dwelling between the 51 JacquelineStefanko Dominican Republic and the United States. Third person character-specific narrativepieces engage mobility as the novel progressesbackward through time and experiencein orderto enablefirst person narrators to emergeand take over the telling of their memories.Similarly, In the Timeof the Butterflies,Alvarez's secondnovel, is comprisedof the firstperson voices of the four sistersknown as Las Mariposasbecause of their political activismin the Dominican Republic. Yet, Dede, the sisterwho survives,speaks through a third-personcharacter-spe- cific narratoruntil the end of the text when, after her sisters'memories have been narrated,her own voice emergesto articulate"I." Explicitly autobiograph- ical, GettingHome Alive is the cross-fertilizationof two women'svoices, Rosa- rio's and Aurora's, mother and daughter respectively,speaking in several tonguesand severalgenres. The polyphonyof each of these texts elucidatesthe subjectof consciousnessas a weave of multiple sites of identificationand con- testation. Underlyingthe constructionof each of these polyphonic narrativesthere appears to be what Clifford describes as "unresolvedhistorical dialogues betweencontinuity and disruption,essence and positionality,homogeneity and differences(cross-cutting 'us' and 'them') [that]characterize diasporic articula- tions."9Due to the processesof exile and migration,which establishthe ambiv- alent gesture of traveling/dwelling,Alvarez, Garcia, Morales, and Levins Moraleswrite in diaspora,and theirtexts areexpressions of the dialoguesgener- ated by their negotiation of such traveling.In an essay on the black women writer'sliterary tradition, Mae GwendolynHenderson explains that "whatis at once characteristicand suggestiveabout blackwomen's writing is its interlocu- tory, or dialogiccharacter, reflecting not only a relationshipwith the 'other(s),' but an internaldialogue with the pluralaspects of self that constitutethe matrix of blackfemale subjectivity."10 While she is speakingspecifically about African Americanwomen authors,her insightsappear to be quite relevantto the litera- ture being producedby Latinasinvolved in culturesof displacement,transplan- tation, and return. The creation of multiple narratorscan be consideredan integralpart of the authors'performance of both their externaland internal diasporicdialogues, suggesting that utilizingthe multiplevoices is a manifesta- tion of the subjectof consciousness-shiftingamong multiple positions. Further- more, as readersand critics,we must becomediasporic in our apprehensionand comprehensionof their texts and accept Carol Boyce Davies's assertionthat AfricanAmerican and Caribbeanwomen's writing "should be readas a seriesof boundarycrossings and not as a fixed geographical,ethnically or nationally bound categoryof writing.11 Both the dialogic,diasporic narrative created by 52 JacquelineStefanko the authorand the dialogic,diasporic self expressedvia the text can be claimed as hybrids. Mestizaje,the concept of hybridityculturally specific for Latinas,involves the conceptionof a "multiplesubject who is not fragmented."12 The coverpic- ture and opening