SPANISH III: CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES
PANEL 1
CHAIR: ELISA RIZO
Assimilation in the Name of the Father in Asian-Hispanic Poetry
By Debbie Lee
The role that parents' play in laying the groundwork for the formation of a national identity in the minds of their children is as crucial sometimes as the effect that the dominant culture outside the home has. However, in many cases master discourses infiltrate the home through the words of the parents' who want their children to find a sense of belonging and not experience the exclusion that they did. The affect that neo-colonization has on immigrant family units often disrupts the transmission of the cultural input regarding the parents' country/countries of origin. The parents cut the ties to the old culture in hopes of achieving acceptance in the new. This study explores this phenomenon in the poetry of three members of the Asian-Hispanic literary diaspora: Pedro Shimose, Doris Moromisato and José Watanabe. The role of father will be scrutinized greatly as the poems chosen all remark on the connections that the poetic voice adopts with the new culture as a result of the lessons of the father. In some cases cultural ties were not lost (Moromisato) whereas in others they were (Shimose and Watanabe).
La Llorona: Secuela inconsciente y colonial de la madre asfixiante
by
Manuel Apodaca
De acuerdo con Julia Kristeva, dos tipos de maternidad han sido diseñadas por la sociedad occidental: la madre asfixiante y la madre sobreprotectora. El mito de la Llorona es estudiado aquí histórica y culturalmente bajo las perspectivas de la teoría postcolonial y el psicoanálisis.
Se compara la dualidad maternal de occidente con la dualidad feroz-amorosa de las deidades femeninas aztecas Coatlicue-Tonantzin; y en las sociedades chicana y mexicana contemporáneas, el papel que juegan las figuras de Malinche y la Llorona versus la Virgen de Guadalupe y la "Madrecita Santa" en el inconsciente colectivo de ambas culturas.
Tres obras literarias sobre la Llorona, José María Marroquí (1859), Francisco Neve (1917) y Carmen Toscano (1959), forman el corpus literario para un primer análisis comparativo.
En una siguiente fase se discute la posibilidad del origen prehispánico del mito de acuerdo con Sahagún, el cual persiste aún en múltiples versiones y se ha extendido por todo México y el sur de los Estados Unidos, reflejando ante todo una intención moralizante de castigo eterno hacia las madres que atentan contra la vida de sus propios hijos.
De-Constructing the Feminine Mexican identity: Like Water for Chocolate
By Char PrietoIs Like Water for Chocolate a cookbook, a novel? Is it a sentimental soap opera or a book of sociological criticism?
Laura Esquivel combines both: The serial novel and the book of feminist vindication. Her work transgresses the pre-established order of the Mexican Revolution. To this idea we will apply the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin who states that literary discourse is a social political phenomenon related to experiences lived by the author. According to this philosophy it could be said that it impossible to separate language and ideology and is therefore necessary to take into account the sociohistorical events and cultural conditions in the space in which the novelist lives. Authors create characters to evaluate and denounce the society while at the same time their creativity is inspired by their life. For that reason, the literary hero has both, a productive quality and a constructive nature. In Like Water for Chocolate we can find these two Bakhtinian notes. We can see the thread of the creativity in the culinary and the amorous thematic of the novel, while we notice the productivity and constructivity though criticism and compromise exposed by the author.
The social relevance of rhythmical elements in the "mulatto" poetry of Luis Palés Matos and Nicolás Guillén
By Adriana Tápanes-InojosaAfro-Caribbean poetry in Cuba and Puerto Rico, during the first half of the 20th century, has often been studied for its "coloristic" or "negrista" aspects, but this orientation has often ignored the great importance of Caribbean social and political happenings. It is necessary to reexamine several social and literary issues related to the importance of popular music--specifically the Cuban son and the Puerto Rican plena--as a social factor for identifying and unifying the marginal social classes in the poetic work of Nicolás Guillén in Cuba and Luis Palés Matos in Puerto Rico.
In this study I will analyze the unifying importance of rhythmic elements of "Danza negra" and "Canción festiva para ser llorada" by Palés Matos and "Sensemayá" and "El secuestro de la mujer de Antonio" by Nicolás Guillén. The main question posed here was whether these works were a political project for unifying minorities, or only a further example of so-called "costumbrism."