La experiencia del exilio: La clase social, el idioma, los géneros sexuales y la identidad en textos seleccionados de Julia Álvarez, Loida Maritza Pérez y Junot Díaz: Escritores dominico-americanos

Nalda R Baez, Purdue University

Abstract

This research is focused on three Dominican-Americans and some of their work: Julia Álvarez How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1992), Junot Díaz Drown (1997) and Loida Maritza Pérez Geographies of Home (1999). This dissertation will demonstrate that the characters of these novels are affected by their exile experiences as displaced in space, which takes them to experience other things in their life, contributing to cultural changes such as: social class, language, gender roles and identity. Considering the need of writing to describe the new phenomena in literature about the exile experience of the Diaspora and also relocation of the characters in their lives between the Dominican Republic and the United States, it will examine the issues of otherness, empowerment, displacement, and poverty in their work as part of the colonized and decolonized image. This research will expose the new tendency of Dominican-American writers to directly and indirectly present a “double identity” in their work. Their characters show an ambivalent desire to claim the United States as their adoptive home even though they refuse to be assimilated. The result is the representation of these writers in their work because as the characters they remember their country but through the act of writing about exile. Even though the result of this research is based on analysis of the novels, the findings conclude that the state of exile does have a correlation with memories by freeing the characters of cultural constraints to their homeland while surviving in the new country.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Stinchcomb, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Modern literature|Latin American literature

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