Exilio, transculturación parcial e identidad mestiza en How the García Girls lost Their Accents de la autora domínico-americana Julia Álvarez

  1. Endika Basáñez Barrio 1
  1. 1 Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
    info

    Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

    Lejona, España

    ROR https://ror.org/000xsnr85

Journal:
Imagonautas: revista Interdisciplinaria sobre imaginarios sociales

ISSN: 0719-0166

Year of publication: 2018

Issue: 12

Pages: 187-205

Type: Article

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More publications in: Imagonautas: revista Interdisciplinaria sobre imaginarios sociales

Abstract

Dominican migration to the United States and, particularly to New York City, has recently become a new attraction for academic researchers because of its remarkable growth that has no equal similarities throughout American History. One of the most interesting questions this phenomenon has highlighted is the construction of a new identity for those Dominican citizens who have fled their country and have found in America their new homeland mostly from 1980 on. This being said, this paper focuses on New York-born Dominican writer Julia Álvarez’s main work: How The García Girls lost Their Accents (1991), which depictes the history of four Dominican sisters who are forced to leave their island in order to avoid Trujillo’s dictatorship and start over in New York City, where hegemonic anglo culture eventually becomes a part of their own identity even though their Hispanic-Caribbean ethnicity. Far from rejecting the Englishspeaking world they find themselves in, they seem to build a bridge between it and their former Hispanic culture, which may lets us approach to the way Hispanic migrants have developed a new mestizo culture that feeds on their former lives in a Spanish-speaking country and their new anglo present. To analyze deeply the concept of mestizo culture I will turn to Gloria Anzaldúa’s previous piece of work on the matter itself and so will I do with Edward W. Said’s reflections on the power related relationships within different cultures.

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Data source: Dialnet