| This dissertation examines selected narratives by insular and U.S. Puerto Rican women authors, including Rosario Ferré, Ana Lydia Vega, Judith Ortíz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago, and Nicholasa Mohr, in order to trace the continuities and discontinuities that exist between these two bodies of Puerto Rican literature. I argue that the connection between Puerto Rican women's literature in the Island and the U.S. is evident in the similar roles that writing plays in each of these contexts; first, as instrument in the construction of national identity; second, as depository of collective memory; and third, as cathartic exercise that challenges patriarchy. In Chapter 1, I begin by mapping out the historical development of Puerto Rican identity both in the Island and the mainland, and also trace the evolution of Puerto Rican literature in the U.S. In this chapter I also establish the theoretical frameworks that inform the rest of the dissertation. Chapter 2 discusses the role that literature plays in the construction of a Puerto Rican national identity. I outline the history behind the discourse of nationality in Puerto Rican canonical works and examine the intersection of patriarchal and national discourses that women authors denounce in their texts. I pay particular attention to the foundational myth of the Great Puerto Rican Family and explore the way in which it is subverted in the narrative of insular and U.S. Puerto Rican women authors. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between writing, history, and collective memory. I argue that in their works, insular women authors challenge canonized history and uncover the paternalistic discourse behind dominant versions of the past. I also address the role that writing plays as depository of collective memory in U.S. Puerto Rican literature, and explore the intersection of writing, memory, autobiography, and nation in this context. Chapter 4 analyzes the role that literature plays as cathartic exercise in insular and U.S. Puerto Rican women's literature, thus representing the strongest link between these literary corpuses. I show how their narratives engage in the critique of machismo and the rearticulation of female subjectivity in Puerto Rican culture. |
