Humanizing the Immigrant Experience in Angie Cruz’s Dominicana
- 1 Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao
- Francisco Gallardo-del-Puerto (coord.)
- Mª del Carmen Camus-Camus (coord.)
- Jesús Ángel González-López (coord.)
Editorial: Editorial de la Universidad de Cantabria ; Universidad de Cantabria
ISBN: 978-84-19024-15-2
Año de publicación: 2022
Páginas: 182-188
Congreso: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos. Congreso (44. 2021. Santander)
Tipo: Aportación congreso
Resumen
Angie Cruz’s Dominicana (2019) tells a moving story that both confirms and subverts many of the cliches and stereotypes found in immigrant narratives, thus somehow “humanizing” the genre. Ana Canción, the protagonist and main narrator of the story, leaves her homeland (Dominican Republic) at the tender age of fifteen, soon after marrying a man more than twice her age and perceived by her family as the last hope to escape their declining farm. The book relates Ana’s coming-of-age adventures in the alien context of Washington Heights, New York, during the turbulent mid-1960s. Despite the protagonist’s dreams and her tremendous courage, she has to fight forces (some economic, others sociocultural, and still others related to gender) that make her vulnerability increasingly evident. My analysis of Cruz’s novel concentrates both on those elements of Ana’s experience that may turn it into a conventional immigrant narrative and others that can be said to be very idiosyncratic of her immigrant story.