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FROM “JIBARA” TO “CHIQUITA”: CONFESSIONS OF DIS-BELONGING IN ESMERALDA SANTIAGO’S MEMOIRS

Year 2018, Volume: 20 Issue: 3, 315 - 331, 12.11.2018
https://doi.org/10.16953/deusosbil.429609

Abstract

This paper by focusing on the intersection
of race, gender and identity as reflected in the three memoirs of the
Puerto-Rican American writer Esmeralda Santiago, When I was Puerto Rican (1993),
Almost a Woman (1998) and The Turkish Lover (2004), attempts to read into the
complex dynamics of the Puerto-Rican migrant female experience. Esmeralda
Santiago’s memoirs that intertwine the problem of transculturation with that of
male dominance and cultural patriarchy rest on her desire to find and sustain a
stable point of reference in a world marked by mobility, transitivity,
discontinuity and fragmentation. The feelings of vulnerability and invisibility
that she constantly experiences within her Puerto-Rican culture and later with
her Turkish lover lead her to resist rather than accept a gendered and
racialized self. However it also leads her to forge an identity “distinct from”
and “in conflict with” the significant Others around her.  In When I was Puerto Rican, she is the black
jibara “Negi” highly critical and at odds with her Puerto/AmeRican island
heritage; in Almost A Woman, she is the lost young female Esmeralda trying to
rise above her mother, family and Nuyorican community; and in the The Turkish
Lover she is the Esmeralda Santiago who learns to judge her own self and others
through the social and racial categories and cultural standards of American
society. This paper asserts that unlike many women autobiographical writers,
Esmeralda Santiago can achieve to create a sense of belonging in her life only
through an assertion of difference and later through the contestation of her
Puerto-Rican female identity.

References

  • Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute.
  • Bellah, R. (1996). Habits of the heart: Individual and commitment in American life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Benston, K. W. (1984). I yam what i am: The topos of (un)naming in Afro-American literature.” H. L. Gates Jr. (Ed.), In Black literature and literary theory, (151-172). New York: Methuen.
  • Bercovitch, S. (1978). The American jeremaid. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Boym, Sv. (2001). The future of nostalgia. New York: Basic.
  • Chavez, L. (1991). Out of the barrio: Toward a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. New York: Basic.
  • Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Cruz, M. A. (2006). Esmeralda Santiago in the Marketplace of Identity Politics. Centro Journal, 18 (1), 170-187. Retrieved from https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1463/EsmeraldaSantiago-IdentityPolitics.pdf.
  • Duany, J. (2002). Puerto-Rican nation on the move: Identities on the island and in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  • Echano, M. V. (2003). ‘Somewhere between Puerto Rico and New York’: The representation of individual and collective identities in Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman. Prose Studies, 26 (1): 112-130. doi:10.1080/0144035032000235846.
  • Flores, J. (1993). Divided borders: Essays on Puerto Rican identity. Houston: Arte Publico.
  • Friedman, S. S. (1998). Women’s autobiographical selves: Theory and practice. S. Smith & J. Watson (Eds.), In Women, autobiography, theory: A reader (72-82), Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Gonzales, L. S. (2001). Boricua literature: A literary history of the Puerto Rican diaspora. New York: New York University Press.
  • Hsu, R. (1996). Will the model minority please identify itself? American ethnic identity and its discontents. Diaspora, 5 (1): 37-63. doi:10.1353/dsp.1996.0004.
  • Korpez, E. (2006). The Turkish lover [Review of the book The Turkish lover, by E. Santiago]. JAST, 23, 147-48.
  • Lao, A. (1997). Islands at the crossroads: Puerto-Ricaness travelling between the translocal nation and the global city. F. Negrón-Muntener & R. Grostoguel (Eds.), In Puerto Rican jam: Rethinking colonialism and nationalism (169-188), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Ma, S. (1998). Interracial eroticism in Asian-American literature: Male subjectivity and white bodies.” In Immigrant subjectivities in Asian American and Asian diaspora literatures, (63-90). Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Mageo, J. M. (2002). Power and the self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mayock, E. C. (1998). The bicultural construction of self in Cisneros, Álvarez, and Santiago. The Bilingual Review, 23 (3): 223–229. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25745627.
  • Perez, G. (2004). The Near Northwest side story: Migration, displacement, and Puerto-Rican families. Berkeley, California University Press.
  • Said, E. (2000). Reflections on exile. In Reflections on exile and other essays (178-191). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Santiago, E. (1993). When I was Puerto Rican. New York: Vintage.
  • Santiago, E. (1998). Almost a woman. New York: Vintage.
  • Santiago, E. (2004). The Turkish lover. Cambridge: DeCapo. Shweder, R. A., N.C. Much, M. Mahapatra & L. Park. (2003). The ‘big three’ of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the ‘big three’ explanations of suffering.” R. A. Shweder (Ed.), In Why do men barbecue?: Recipes for cultural psychology (74-133). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. http://books.google.com/books.
  • Silvestrini, B. (1997). The world we enter when claiming rights: Latinos and their quest for culture.” W. V. Flores & R. Benmayor (Eds), In Latino cultural citizenship: Claiming identity, space and rights, (39-53). Boston: Beacon.
  • Sommer, D. (1988).'Not just a personal story': Women's testimonios and the plural self. B. Brodzki & C. Schenck (Eds.), In Life/lines: Theorizing women's autobiography (107-130). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
  • Soto-Crespo, R. (2006). An intractable foundation: Luis Muñoz Marín and the borderland state in contemporary Puerto-Rican literature. American Literary History, 18 (4): 712-738. Retrieved from http://alh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/18/4/712.
  • Suero-Elliot, M. J. (2008). Subverting the mainland: Transmigratory biculturalism in U.S. Puerto Rican women’s fiction. J. L Torres & C. H. Rivera (Eds.), In Writing off the hyphen: New perspectives on the literature of the Puerto-Rican diaspora (332-350). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
  • Szadziuk, M. (1999). Culture as transition: Becoming a woman in bi-ethnic space. Mosaic, 32 (3): 109-129. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029803.
  • Taylor, C. (1994). Politics of recognition. A. Gutmann (Ed.), In Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition (25-74). Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press.
  • Torres, A. (1995). Between melting pot and mosaic: African Americans and Puerto-Ricans in the New York political economy. Philadelphia; Temple University Press.
  • Turner, B. S. (2001). Outline of a general theory of cultural citizenship. Nick Stevenson (Ed.), In Culture and citizenship (11-32). London: Sage.

JİBARA’DAN CHİQUİTA’YA: ESMERALDA SANTİAGO’NUN ANILARINDA BİR YERE AİT OLAMAMANIN İTİRAFLARI

Year 2018, Volume: 20 Issue: 3, 315 - 331, 12.11.2018
https://doi.org/10.16953/deusosbil.429609

Abstract

Bu makale, Porto Rikolu Amerikalı yazar Esmeralda Santiago’nun, When I was
Puerto Rican (1993), Almost a Woman (1998) ve The Turkish Lover (2004) adlı üç
anı kitabındaki ırk, cinsiyet ve kimlik kavramlarının kesiştiği noktalara
odaklanarak, Porto Rikolu göçmen kadın deneyiminin iç içe geçmiş dinamiklerini
irdelemeye amaçlamaktadır. Kültürler ötesi olma sorununu erkek egemen kültür
yapısıyla birlikte ele alan bu anı kitapları, Esmeralda Santiago’nun
hareketlilik,  geçişkenlik, süreksizlik
ve parçalanmanın hakim olduğu bir dünyada tutarlı bir referans noktası bulma ve
bunu sürdürebilme arzusu üzerine şekillenir. Porto Riko kültürünün yanı sıra
annesi ve sevgilisi ile de yaşadığı kırılganlık ve yok sayılma gibi duygular,
yazarın cinsiyete ve ırka bağlı bir benliği kabul etmesinden ziyade böyle bir
benliğe karşı direnmesine yol açmıştır. Ancak bu durum, değer verdiği kişilerle
çatışan ve onlardan kendini ayrı tutan bir kimliğe bürünmesine de sebep olur.
Yazar, When I was Puerto Rican adlı kitabında hem Porto Rikolu hem de Amerikalı
köklerine eleştirel yaklaşan ve onlara ters düşen “Negi” adlı siyahi bir jibara
olmuşken, Almost a Woman kitabında annesi, ailesi ve Nuyorica topluluğunu
geride bırakmaya çalışan genç Esmeraldaya dönüşür. The Turkish Lover adlı
eserinde ise Amerikan toplumunun sosyal ve ırksal sınıfları ve kültürel
standartları üzerinden kendini ve başkalarını yargılamayı öğrenen bir Esmeralda
Santiago ile karşılaşırız. Bu makale, birçok otobiografik kadın yazarların
aksine, Esmeralda Santiago’nun önceleri bir farklılık iddiası, sonrasında ise
Porto-Rikalı kadın kimliğine karşı verdiği mücadele ile ancak bir aidiyet
duygusu yaratmayı başarabildiğini ileri sürmektedir. 

References

  • Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute.
  • Bellah, R. (1996). Habits of the heart: Individual and commitment in American life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Benston, K. W. (1984). I yam what i am: The topos of (un)naming in Afro-American literature.” H. L. Gates Jr. (Ed.), In Black literature and literary theory, (151-172). New York: Methuen.
  • Bercovitch, S. (1978). The American jeremaid. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Boym, Sv. (2001). The future of nostalgia. New York: Basic.
  • Chavez, L. (1991). Out of the barrio: Toward a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. New York: Basic.
  • Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Cruz, M. A. (2006). Esmeralda Santiago in the Marketplace of Identity Politics. Centro Journal, 18 (1), 170-187. Retrieved from https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1463/EsmeraldaSantiago-IdentityPolitics.pdf.
  • Duany, J. (2002). Puerto-Rican nation on the move: Identities on the island and in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  • Echano, M. V. (2003). ‘Somewhere between Puerto Rico and New York’: The representation of individual and collective identities in Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman. Prose Studies, 26 (1): 112-130. doi:10.1080/0144035032000235846.
  • Flores, J. (1993). Divided borders: Essays on Puerto Rican identity. Houston: Arte Publico.
  • Friedman, S. S. (1998). Women’s autobiographical selves: Theory and practice. S. Smith & J. Watson (Eds.), In Women, autobiography, theory: A reader (72-82), Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Gonzales, L. S. (2001). Boricua literature: A literary history of the Puerto Rican diaspora. New York: New York University Press.
  • Hsu, R. (1996). Will the model minority please identify itself? American ethnic identity and its discontents. Diaspora, 5 (1): 37-63. doi:10.1353/dsp.1996.0004.
  • Korpez, E. (2006). The Turkish lover [Review of the book The Turkish lover, by E. Santiago]. JAST, 23, 147-48.
  • Lao, A. (1997). Islands at the crossroads: Puerto-Ricaness travelling between the translocal nation and the global city. F. Negrón-Muntener & R. Grostoguel (Eds.), In Puerto Rican jam: Rethinking colonialism and nationalism (169-188), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Ma, S. (1998). Interracial eroticism in Asian-American literature: Male subjectivity and white bodies.” In Immigrant subjectivities in Asian American and Asian diaspora literatures, (63-90). Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Mageo, J. M. (2002). Power and the self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mayock, E. C. (1998). The bicultural construction of self in Cisneros, Álvarez, and Santiago. The Bilingual Review, 23 (3): 223–229. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25745627.
  • Perez, G. (2004). The Near Northwest side story: Migration, displacement, and Puerto-Rican families. Berkeley, California University Press.
  • Said, E. (2000). Reflections on exile. In Reflections on exile and other essays (178-191). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Santiago, E. (1993). When I was Puerto Rican. New York: Vintage.
  • Santiago, E. (1998). Almost a woman. New York: Vintage.
  • Santiago, E. (2004). The Turkish lover. Cambridge: DeCapo. Shweder, R. A., N.C. Much, M. Mahapatra & L. Park. (2003). The ‘big three’ of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the ‘big three’ explanations of suffering.” R. A. Shweder (Ed.), In Why do men barbecue?: Recipes for cultural psychology (74-133). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. http://books.google.com/books.
  • Silvestrini, B. (1997). The world we enter when claiming rights: Latinos and their quest for culture.” W. V. Flores & R. Benmayor (Eds), In Latino cultural citizenship: Claiming identity, space and rights, (39-53). Boston: Beacon.
  • Sommer, D. (1988).'Not just a personal story': Women's testimonios and the plural self. B. Brodzki & C. Schenck (Eds.), In Life/lines: Theorizing women's autobiography (107-130). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
  • Soto-Crespo, R. (2006). An intractable foundation: Luis Muñoz Marín and the borderland state in contemporary Puerto-Rican literature. American Literary History, 18 (4): 712-738. Retrieved from http://alh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/18/4/712.
  • Suero-Elliot, M. J. (2008). Subverting the mainland: Transmigratory biculturalism in U.S. Puerto Rican women’s fiction. J. L Torres & C. H. Rivera (Eds.), In Writing off the hyphen: New perspectives on the literature of the Puerto-Rican diaspora (332-350). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
  • Szadziuk, M. (1999). Culture as transition: Becoming a woman in bi-ethnic space. Mosaic, 32 (3): 109-129. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029803.
  • Taylor, C. (1994). Politics of recognition. A. Gutmann (Ed.), In Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition (25-74). Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press.
  • Torres, A. (1995). Between melting pot and mosaic: African Americans and Puerto-Ricans in the New York political economy. Philadelphia; Temple University Press.
  • Turner, B. S. (2001). Outline of a general theory of cultural citizenship. Nick Stevenson (Ed.), In Culture and citizenship (11-32). London: Sage.
There are 32 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Esra Çoker 0000-0002-4983-6496

Publication Date November 12, 2018
Submission Date June 1, 2018
Published in Issue Year 2018 Volume: 20 Issue: 3

Cite

APA Çoker, E. (2018). FROM “JIBARA” TO “CHIQUITA”: CONFESSIONS OF DIS-BELONGING IN ESMERALDA SANTIAGO’S MEMOIRS. Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 20(3), 315-331. https://doi.org/10.16953/deusosbil.429609