The Hemispheric Approach of Julia Alvarez’s Novels

Authors

  • Mónica Fernández Jiménez Universidad de Valladolid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/reden.2020.2.1381

Keywords:

multiculturalism, Hemispheric American Studies, Caribbean discourse, Caribbean literature, Julia Alvarez

Abstract

This article analyses three novels by Julia Alvarez–How the García Girls Lost their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and In the Name of Salomé (2000)– through the lenses of Hemispheric American Studies. Inspired by the teachings of Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s theoretical work The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (1992), I contend that the categorisation of these novels as Latino literature is not enough to describe all of their richness. These novels portray throughout their pages social, political, and artistic relations that tie all of the Americas together, and their analysis benefits from the essays written by Caribbean post-essentialist critics who developed, during the 1990s, a discourse based on the cultural supersyncretism of the islands that helps us to understand the postmodern globalised worlds as it stands. The novels by Alvarez reflect these theories, as they portray the realities of a New World constricted by the workings of race and racism, capitalism, and postcolonialism.

Author Biography

Mónica Fernández Jiménez, Universidad de Valladolid

Mónica Fernández Jiménez is a junior researcher in the English Department at Universidad of Valladolid. There she works on her doctoral thesis exploring the possibilities of a hemispheric Caribbean-American aesthetic. As such, she has published articles in national and international journals dealing with Caribbean and Caribbean-American works like those of Claude McKay, Junot Díaz, Jamaica Kincaid or Derek Walcott. As part of the department she teaches courses on American literature and history and British contemporary literature. As a researcher she is part of a recognised research project on U.S. ethnic literature.

References

Alvarez, Julia. “Doña Aída, with your Permission”. Something to Declare. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2014.

---. How the García Girls Lost their Accents. Plume, 1991.

---. In the Name of Salomé. New York: Plume, 2000.

Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Duke UP, 1992.

Bonfiglio, Florencia. “Notes on the Caribbean Essay from an Archipelagic Perspective (Kamau Brathwaite, Édouard Glissant and Antonio Benítez Rojo).” Caribbean Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, 2015, pp. 147-173.

Bost, Suzanne & Frances R. Aparicio. Editors. The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature. Routledge, 2013.

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. “Latinidad.” The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, edited by Suzanne Bost & Frances R. Aparicio. Routledge, 2013, pp. 13-24.

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Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation, translated by Betsy Wing. The U of Michigan P, 1997.

Hessler, Stephanie. Tidalectics. Thyssen-Bornemiza Art Contemporary Academy, 2017.

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Piper, Karen. “Post-Colonialism in the United States: Diversity or Hybridity?” Post- Colonial Literatures: Expanding the Canon, edited by Deborah L. Madsen. Pluto Press, 1999, pp. 14-28.

Reckin, Anna. “Tidalectic Lectures: Kamau Brathwaite’s Prose/ Poetry as Sound- Space.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1-16.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. Granta Books, 1991.

Sharpe, Jenny. “Is the United States Postcolonial?: Transnationalism, Immigration, and Race.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 1995, pp. 181-199.

Walcott, Derek. “The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 1, no. 16, 1974, pp. 3- 13.

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Published

2020-11-30

How to Cite

Fernández Jiménez, M. (2020). The Hemispheric Approach of Julia Alvarez’s Novels. REDEN. Revista Española De Estudios Norteamericanos, 2(1), 39-48. https://doi.org/10.37536/reden.2020.2.1381

Issue

Section

Miscellanea