Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Comparative Literature
Sub-Department
College of Arts and Sciences
First Advisor
Isis Sadek
Abstract
While a considerable critical field has developed around US Latino writing, due to the historical, cultural and sociolinguistic barriers between the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, critical investigations of these migrant literatures are often not bridged, but rather isolated into respective Haitian-American and Dominican-American designations. My comparative, critical framework defines the interactions between gender, culture and the diverse spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola, the Atlantic and the United States. The carefully differentiated objects of study that I articulate in each chapter offer a desirable interdisciplinary orientation inclusive of gender theory as well as cultural studies. I examine three iterations of transnational women’s writing using work by renowned writers Edwidge Danticat (Haitian-American) and Julia Alvarez (Dominican-American). Chapter one focuses on an analysis of migrant women’s subjectivity in the Bildungsroman or coming of age novel. Chapter two investigates race and gender in novels that recreate historical events in the migrant homeland Chapter three links works of non-fiction with the author’s varying transnational social justice initiatives. Each chapter compares and contrasts the framing of transnational literature of the Caribbean-American with a specific interest in gender, culture and spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Atlantic and the United States.
Rights
© 2015, Jennifer Lynn Karash-Eastman
Recommended Citation
Karash-Eastman, J. L.(2015). The Trialectics Of Transnational Migrant Women’s Literature In The Writing Of Edwidge Danticat And Julia Alvarez. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3707