Linking the Americas

Lesley Feracho

Description

What links women of the Americas? How do they redefine their identities? Lesley Feracho answers these questions through a comparative look at texts by four women writers from across the Americas—Zora Neale Hurston, Julieta Campos, Carolina Maria de Jesus, and Clarice Lispector. She explores how their writing reformulates identity as an intricate connection of the historical, sociocultural, and discursive, and also reveals new understandings of feminine writing as a hybrid discourse in and of itself.
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. The Radicalization of Marginality in Jesus’s Quarto de despejo: Diário de uma favelada
2. Jesus’s Diário and the Hybrid Forms of Textual Agency
3. Authorial Intervention in A hora da estrela: Metatextual and Structural Multiplicity
4. Textual Cross-Gendering of the Self and the Other in Lispector’s A hora da estrela
5. Campos’s Tiene los cabellos rojizos y se llama Sabina: The Multivocality of Identity
6. Telling My Story: Campos’s Rewriting of the Feminine Voice in Sabina
7. The Autobiographical Pact and Hurston’s Restructuring of Difference
8. Wandering through the Dust: Textual Statues in Dust Tracks on a Road
Conclusion

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Latin American
• Latin America
• Caribbean

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791483503
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Linking the Americas

SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture

Jorge J. E. Gracia/Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal, editors

Linking the Americas

Race, Hybrid Discourses, and the Reformulation of Feminine Identity

Lesley Feracho

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2005 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address the State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Feracho, Lesley, 1968– Linking the Americas : race, hybrid discourses, and the reformulation of feminine identity / Lesley Feracho. p. cm. — (SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6403-2 1. Latin American literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 2. America—Literatures—Women authors. 3. Autobiography—Women authors. 4. Women in literature. 5. Self in literature. 6. Race in literature. 7. Jesus, Carolina Maria de. Quarto de despejo. 8. Campos, Julieta. Tiene los cabellos rojizos y se llama Sabina. 9. Lispector, Clarice. Hora da estrela. 10. Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust tracks on a road. I. Title. II. Series.

PQ7081.5.F47 2005 860.9'9287'098—dc22

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Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Contents

The Radicalization of Marginality in Jesus’s Quarto de despejo: Diário de uma favelada

Jesus’sDiáriothe Hybrid Forms of and Textual Agency

Authorial Intervention inA hora da estrela: Metatextual and Structural Multiplicity

Textual Cross-Gendering of the Self and the Other in Lispector’sA hora da estrela

Campos’sTiene los cabellos rojizos y se llama Sabina: The Multivocality of Identity

Telling My Story: Campos’s Rewriting of the Feminine Voice inSabina

The Autobiographical Pact and Hurston’s Restructuring of Difference

Wandering through the Dust: Textual Statues inDust Tracks on a Road

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Acknowledgments

While the authorship of a book is attributed to one person, it is never truly an individual act. This book would not have been possible without the guidance and support of many people. Two of the most important that I would like to thank are my parents, Desmond and Lorna Feracho, for all their love, encouragement and care throughout. Such an endeavor was not possible without the professors who provided both professional advice and much needed perspective on my research. Many thanks to Debra Castillo for her inspiration and invalu- able input in making this book a reality. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the University of Georgia: in particular, Susan Quinlan, for her constant, untiring help in ways too numerous to count, from the very beginning of this process to the end; Barbara McCaskill, for continually providing encouragement to embrace every challenge that presented it- self, and Department Chair Noel Fallows, for his support of the comple- tion of this project. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the professors on my dissertation committee at Duke University whose guidance at the inception of this project helped lay its foundation. In order to nurture the seeds of any intellectual spark, an idea is only the beginning. One needs time to see it grow. I am grateful to the people and departments that provided me with that time and support to focus on my research and development. Many thanks to the Director, James Jackson, and the professors of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Because of the DuBois- Mandela-Rodney Postdoctoral Fellowship of 2001 and 2002, not only was I provided with financial aid for my research but most importantly, a vibrant intellectual space in which to dialogue. I also thank Marvin Lewis, Director of the Afro-Romance Institute for Languages and Literatures of the African Diaspora at the University of Missouri-Columbia for the example of his scholarship, the opportunity the Institute gave me to make important progress, and his insights into my work. I would also like to extend heartfelt thanks to friends whose en- couragement has been an important contribution to this book’s comple- tion. Special thanks to Arnetta and Ifeoma who have inspired me to constantly challenge myself and have provided important feedback for my ideas.

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Acknowledgments

This work, while nurtured by many, could not be finished without an outlet for its expression. I owe gratitude to all those at SUNY Press: in particular, Rosemary Feal, Jorge Gracia, Michael Rinella and Marilyn Semerad. Their enthusiasm and input provided the outlet that saw this project to fruition. Finally, I thank God for health, strength and for placing all the people in my path that have contributed in so many ways to the realiza- tion of this dream.

Introduction

Women and Individual and Communal Identities

An understanding of any socially and historically gendered subject must take into account definitions of the individual along with the complex interactions of peoples that form a collective. It is the interaction of the two that defines us and against which we define ourselves. In the end, one consequence of this process of mutual influences of individual and community is a greater understanding of the ways in which identity is formed and redefined. In defining the representation of identity there are issues that are an integral part of the approaches to each self-definition—whether subjec- tive or objective. Among these are questions of power and its effect on the development of individual agency. This inquiry in its various forms has centered on themes of entitlement to power and its uses, abuses, and levels of engagement. Because it is at the root of human interaction the dynamics of power is displayed in a wide range of arenas, among them social relations, economics, politics, science, history, and literature. In particular, the ability to exercise power in the construction or reconstruction of identity (whether individual or communal) has been sought after throughout history, since before the written word. As crit- ics like Debra Castillo and Trinh Minh-ha have explored in their works, who has the power to write, and consequently, who is excluded from this activity, are two important questions to be considered in studying 1 the history of writing as a tool of yielding power. Their studies have shown that the answers to these questions are different when exploring men’s access to writing versus women’s because of women’s disenfran- chisement and restricted access to instruments of empowerment. In addition, a complex web of factors ranging from race and class to his- torical context, sexuality, and religion mediates each woman’s access to these tools. These factors when considered together contribute to a subject who is defined not only as an individual entity but also in relation to a collective—be it as part of a majority or belonging to a marginalized group. For the marginalized in particular, the process of self-definition includes a search for tools of empowerment. Among the

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