The Construction of Hybrid Identities in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine and
Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Turan Kolukirik
S1914049
Supervisor: Dr. J.C. Kardux
Second Reader: Prof.dr. P.T.M.G. Liebregts
June 19, 2019
English Literature and Culture
Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities
Table of contents
Introduction………3
Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework………6
Chapter 2: “So We Can Rebirth Ourselves in the Images of Dreams”: Identity Transformations and the Limits of Assimilation in Jasmine…………...……….12
Chapter 3: Revisiting the Past to Reconcile with the Present: Bicultural Identity (Re)construction in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents………...………..31
3.1: Carla, Sandra, and Sofía……….…………35
3.2: Yolanda……….……….50
Conclusion………..…….62
Introduction
In an era of globalization, our contemporary world is characterized by “unparalleled mobility, migration, and border crossing” and concurrent “clashes, meetings, fusions and intermixings” of cultures (Moslund 1-2). Literature attests to and critically reflects on globalization and migration. As Fatemeh Pourjafari and Abdolali Vahidpour point out, in immigration literature, protagonists “endlessly recreate [themselves] through [their] encounters with cultural complexities and discriminating experience of being a minority” (686). Immigrant identities are constructed through a constant process of negotiation between the old and new cultures. In relation to the formation of identities in the context of intercultural encounters, Homi K. Bhabha theorizes the concept of cultural hybridity in his influential book The
Location of Culture (1994). Immigrant and other minority groups often find themselves in an
in-between, liminal space between cultures (Rutherford 211). Though this position often produces conflict and anxiety, Bhabha argues that this “interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (Location 5): the “process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation,” which he calls “the Third Space” (Rutherford 211, emphasis added). In relation to cultural hybridity, he also elaborates on Fanon’s concept of “mimicry,” which he calls “the affect of hybridity.” Mimicry itself refers to the ways in which the colonized imitate the dominant culture’s traits in an attempt to attain the position of power associated with that dominant culture or, more drastically and subversively, attempt to subvert the power dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized by asserting their hybrid identity in the Third Space (Bhabha, “Signs” 162).
Taking Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity and mimicry as a point of departure, this thesis will analyze and compare the construction of hybrid identities in Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine (1989) and Julia Alvarez’s novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
(1991). Forced and voluntary migration is a prominent theme in both of these works and leads to identity conflicts that the main characters resolve in different ways. The female protagonists in these works, who are all first-generation immigrants, feel that they belong neither fully to (the culture of) their native country nor their host country and struggle with negotiating their identities in the liminal space in-between the two cultures. In Jasmine, the protagonist leaves India for the United States after her husband’s death and adopts multiple hybrid identities in her struggle for survival and the gradual process of Americanization. How
the García Girls Lost Their Accents tells the story of the hardships faced by the four García
sisters after their family is forced to leave the Dominican Republic to live in New York. The novel focuses on the difficulties they face trying to reconcile their family-oriented and male-dominated native culture and individualistic American culture and its changing gender norms.
Reading both novels in the context of Bhabha’s theoretical concepts of the Third Space, mimicry, and hybridity, I will argue that while the protagonists in both of these works develop characteristics of hybrid identities to a certain extent, there are differences in the role mimicry and hybridity play in each of them. In Jasmine, mimicry, rather than contributing to the construction of an ultimately hybrid identity, seems to be part of a process which
eventually leads to the protagonist’s assimilation into the host culture. Similarly, in How the
García Girls Lost Their Accents, mimicry also plays an important role in the four sisters’
cultural adjustments. However, while most of the characters in this novel seem to remain in a liminal space of unresolved conflict regarding their identities, particularly Yolanda seems to find a way to construct a form of hybridity for herself.
In my close analysis of these novels, I will examine the construction and
representation of hybrid identities in relation to migration. In the first chapter, I will provide a theoretical framework by discussing Bhabha’s postcolonial theory on cultural hybridity. I will specifically focus on the Third Space and colonial mimicry regarding cultural hybridity
and its significance in relation to American immigrant literature. In the following two chapters, I will apply Bhabha’s theoretical concepts in my comparative close analysis of
Jasmine and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, focusing on the different ways in
Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework
Hybridity is a term often used to refer to “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization” (Ashcroft et al. 118). Bhabha’s particular discussion of cultural hybridity, grounded in post-colonialism, avoids what he calls “that very simplistic polarity between the ruler and the ruled” (Rutherford 220) and instead focuses on “the interdependence and mutual construction of subjectivities” in the context of
“colonizer/colonized relations” (Ashcroft et al. 118). While Bhabha’s theories regarding cultural hybridity are originally set in a post-colonial context, their use can also be extended to immigration literature because, similarly to colonized people, “migrants are predominantly positioned at the margins of society and are subject to the hegemonial claims of the majority” (Pourjafari and Vahidpour 685). In the context of this thesis, it is important to note that although Mukherjee’s and Alvarez’s novels evidently deal with migration, they are, to some extent, also lent a postcolonial character because of India’s (British) colonial past and the United States’ “neo-colonial relationship” with the Dominican Republic throughout much of the twentieth century (Morín 131). In his analysis of cultural hybridity, Bhabha repeatedly discusses cultural difference and ambivalence in relation to the concepts of the Third Space, mimicry, and hybridity. In order to provide a clear theoretical framework for my analysis of the three novels in the following chapters, these concepts will now be discussed in more detail.
Bhabha’s theory on cultural hybridity suggests that “all cultural statements and systems” (Ashcroft et al. 118) are created in the “Third Space of enunciation” (Bhabha, “Commitment” 22). To describe this Third Space between two different cultures, Bhabha uses the metaphor of a stairwell:
The stairwell as a liminal space, in-between the designations of identity, becomes the process of symbolic interaction, the connective tissue that constructs the difference
between upper and lower, black and white. The hither and thither of the stairwell, the temporal movement and passage that it allows, prevents identities at either end of it from settling into primordial polarities. The interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy. (Location 5)
This Third Space described above is where cultural hybridity takes place and is therefore home to “the liminal figure of the hybrid” (Moosavinia and Hosseini 336). Fetson Kalua points out that “[b]y grounding his version of postcolonialism in liminality or the Third Space, Bhabha is able to contextualize the vexed nature of the post-colonial condition and provide a counterpoint to identity issues” (25). The liminal Third Space between cultures can thus become a space of empowerment for the colonized where “the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity” (Bhabha, “Commitment” 21). As a consequence of this characteristic, Bhabha argues that “[t]hese in-between spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular or communal – that initiate new signs of identity” (Location 2).
Richard Bower draws attention to the “ambiguous” nature of this in-between space where “social agency [is] created when individuals connect, interact and react with one another” (488). The Third Space becomes “the precondition for the articulation of cultural difference,” which, in turn, creates the ambivalence which is a crucial characteristic of cultural hybridity (Bhabha, “Commitment” 22). Ultimately, the Third Space “displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives” (Rutherford 211). Therefore, cultural hybridity does not entail a mere mixing of two cultures, but rather the creation of a new cultural form within the ambivalence of the Third Space. More specifically, the Third Space refers to the liminality between the two cultures in which mimicry and hybridity occur and ultimately contributes to the creation of the cultural hybrid.
As mentioned before, as part of his theories on cultural hybridity, Bhabha examines the concept of mimicry. He suggests that mimicry is “the affect of hybridity” and calls it “at once a mode of appropriation and of resistance” (Bhabha, “Signs” 162). In his essay “Of Mimicry and Man” (1984), he describes mimicry as follows:
Mimicry is, thus, the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which “appropriates” the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both “normalized” knowledges and disciplinary powers. (Bhabha, “Mimicry” 126)
This definition of mimicry highlights its double significance. In addition to this distinction made by Bhabha, he also draws attention to another important characteristic of mimicry, its “partial presence” (“Mimicry” 127). The colonized do not simply copy the culture of the colonizer and become completely assimilated. Rather, they always preserve a degree of difference in relation to the colonizer which results in a “partial presence”. Because of this, mimicry essentially produces “a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference
that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, “Mimicry” 126). As a consequence of this
difference, mimicry is always marked by “ambivalence” (Bhabha, “Mimicry” 126). Mimicry can be used by the colonized, or by extension the immigrant, as “an opportunistic method of copying the person in power” (Gupta 3) by emulating “[their] language, dress, politics, or cultural attitude” (Lilja et al. 212). Through mimicry, colonized individuals seek to achieve the position of power associated with the colonizer as they “suppress [their] own cultural identity” (Naresh 16). However, despite their attempts to opportunistically mimic the colonizer in order to fit in or associate themselves with the
dominant culture, the “desire of the colonized for [a] total metamorphosis” is never completely achieved (Gupta 4).
In addition to it being used as a way to obtain the power associated with the colonizer, Bhabha also argues that the ambivalence of mimicry can empower the colonized as it can be used as a tool of subversion: “as discrimination turns into the assertion of the hybrid, the insignia of authority becomes a mask, a mockery” (“Signs” 162). David Huddart, elaborating on Bhabha’s concept, points out that mimicry can essentially become “an exaggerated
copying of language, culture, manners, and ideas” marked by its “difference” (57). He also emphasizes that this “repetition with difference” should not be confused with uncritically imitating the colonizer (Huddart 57). It is not an indication of “the colonized’s servitude” or “assimilation,” but quite the contrary, this version of mimicry becomes “a form of mockery” that ultimately “undermines the ongoing pretentions of colonialism” (Huddart 57). As
Bhabha argues, this process results in a situation in which “the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined, where the observer becomes the observed and ‘partial’ representation rearticulates the whole notion of identity and alienates it from essence”
(“Mimicry” 129). This subversion thus exposes the constructed nature of the identity of the colonizer and its purported superiority. Therefore, Bhabha argues that the ambivalence of mimicry in relation to hybridity in the Third Space empowers the colonized through its potential for the construction of an alternative hybrid identity.
Much like mimicry, hybridity as a whole is also marked by ambivalence. Bhabha argues that “[t]he colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference” (“Signs” 150). The ambivalence caused by this difference enables the manifestation of hybridity. In discussing cultural difference, Bhabha underscores its distinction from cultural diversity. He views cultural diversity as problematic: “although there is always an entertainment and
208). Cultural difference, on the other hand, places itself in a “position of liminality” where it is characterized by its “spirit of alterity or otherness” (Rutherford 209). Therefore, as opposed to cultural diversity, cultural difference is more ambivalent and addresses the anxiety of the dominant culture as this culture is not able to easily identify it. Consequently, the response by the dominant culture to cultural difference can manifest itself in “differentiations,
individuations, identity effects” towards the non-dominant culture, which underscore its (assumed) power over the latter (Bhabha, “Signs” 153). Bhabha proposes hybridity as a response in the form of “the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal (that is, the production of discriminatory identities that secure the ‘pure’ and original identity of authority)” (“Signs” 154). He points out that this entails “the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects and displays the necessary deformation and displacement of all sites of discrimination and domination” (Bhabha, “Signs” 154). Therefore, hybridity engenders a “space of negotiation” between cultures which, together with its rejection of complete assimilation into the dominant culture, also rejects “the binary representation of social antagonism” (Bhabha, “Cultures In-Between” 58). Through his particular identification of difference and ambivalence in the context of intercultural encounters, Bhabha ultimately regards hybridity as a subversive device of empowerment for the hybrid individual to assert his own particular cultural identity.
Having provided an overview of Bhabha’s theoretical concepts regarding cultural hybridity and highlighted its relevance for immigration literature, in the following two chapters, I will apply these theoretical concepts in my analysis of Jasmine and How the
García Girls Lost Their Accents. My analysis will focus on how cultural hybridity is
represented in these works and to what extent the main characters are able to actually mediate their position between their native and host cultures in the context of their immigration and develop a culturally hybrid identity as theorized by Bhabha. Furthermore, I will also examine
how these novels as a whole reflect on the characters’ attempt at constructing cultural identities.
Chapter 2:
“So We Can Rebirth Ourselves in the Images of Dreams”: Identity Transformations and the Limits of Assimilation in Jasmine
Jasmine tells the story of a female India-born immigrant to the United States and the
hardships she experiences in the process of constructing a new cultural identity for herself as a result of the intercultural encounters in her host country. Her decision to leave India and move overseas is fueled by her desire to complete her late husband’s wish for the two of them to emigrate to Florida, where he planned to continue his studies and build up a new life with her. Despite her inability to obtain official immigration documents after his death, Jasmine manages to enter the country as an illegal immigrant after a perilous journey. Upon her arrival in the United States, she faces many difficulties, in response to which she adopts several different identities as she attempts to adapt to her new surroundings (Leard 115). The novel itself is focalized through Jasmine as a first-person narrator who refers to herself by a number of different names (Jyoti, Jasmine, Jazzy, Jase, and Jane) as she looks back on her life as an immigrant. All of these names correspond with a specific stage in her identity transformation throughout the novel. Each successive state of her transformation signifies a new stage of mediation between the American host culture and her native Indian culture, affecting her cultural identity significantly. In order to avoid any confusion in my analysis of
Jasmine, and in line with most critics’ discussion of the novel, I will refer to the protagonist
as Jasmine throughout the rest of this thesis.
Jasmine’s particular journey as an Indian immigrant to the United States lends itself to a reading in light of Bhabha’s theoretical concepts regarding cultural hybridity because of the intercultural encounters which take place in the novel and their effects on Jasmine’s identity constructions. As discussed in the previous chapter, cultural hybridity is a complex
phenomenon which revolves around the relationship between the dominant culture of the colonizer (or host country) and the minority culture of the colonized (or postcolonial
immigrant). While Jasmine’s construction of cultural identities in the course of the novel seems to show several parallels with Bhabha’s theory on cultural hybridity, certain elements of her immigrant experience also complicate it. In this chapter, I will discuss to what extent Jasmine’s experiences as an immigrant living between two cultures contribute to the creation of a hybrid identity as theorized by Bhabha. I will argue that Jasmine initially seems to partially exhibit certain characteristics of a hybrid identity caused by her in-between position concerning her native Indian culture and American host culture. However, as the novel progresses, she gradually discards her hybridity in favor of a more assimilationist attitude regarding her continuously transforming cultural identity. Furthermore, I will also examine how the novel as a whole critically reflects on Jasmine’s identity transformations, specifically focusing on her eventual assimilation into American culture.
Jasmine’s adoption of multiple identities in each successive state of her journey in the United States is the most striking characteristic of her immigrant experience. As Deepika Bahri points out, Jasmine constantly finds herself “along the liminal, ‘fugitive’s’ space where she exists and survives by mutating constantly” (150). In the same vain, John K. Hoppe draws attention to her “interstitial subjectivity which cannot be wholly one presence nor wholly another” (145). Jasmine herself is also aware of her in-between position as an immigrant, as she repeatedly remarks that she feels “suspended between worlds,” “between identities” (76-77).
According to Bhabha, the Third Space is where the colonized or immigrant
individual, caught between two worlds, is enabled to construct a hybrid identity. Jasmine’s liminal position as an immigrant thus provides the potential for her construction of a hybrid consciousness. One of the most prominent ways in which Jasmine’s hybridity manifests itself is through her utilization of mimicry throughout the novel. As pointed out by Bhabha,
mimicry is “the sign of a double articulation” (“Mimicry” 126). It can be used by the colonized or immigrant individual to imitate the dominant culture “as it visualizes power,”
but it can also be taken a step further and be used as a “threat to both ‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers” by exposing the constructed nature of
colonizer/colonized relations (Bhabha, “Mimicry” 126). While mimicry plays a pivotal role in the novel, I argue that Jasmine only succeeds in employing it partially. She clearly uses it to imitate the manners of the dominant culture, but she does not decisively assert what Bhabha calls her “cultural difference” (Rutherford 209) to create an ambivalence through which mimicry becomes a subversive tool that questions the dominant culture’s relation to the minority culture of the immigrant. Rather, as I will show, Jasmine’s partial use of mimicry contributes to her achieving an opportunistic form of hybridity rather than an intentionally and effectively subversive one.
One of the most obvious ways in which mimicry manifests itself in the novel is through Jasmine’s adoption of American-style clothing. Soon after her arrival in the United States, Jasmine is taken in by Lillian Gordon, who renames her “Jazzy” and helps her adjust to her new surroundings, before Jasmine moves on to New York to stay with her late
husband’s teacher, Professor Vadhera. During her stay with Lillian in Florida, Jasmine is made aware of the importance of clothing as a “cultural signifier” (Moslund 128). Lillian helps Jasmine to “dress up in informal American clothes” and imitate American ways in order to “disguise herself from the immigration police,” since she is an illegal immigrant (Moslund 128). Jasmine is eager to adopt American ways of dressing and behavior in her attempt to better fit in with the dominant culture of her new country and does her best to obtain more “American” looks and manners:
She gave me her daughter’s high-school clothes: blouses with Peter Pan collars, maxi skirts, T-shirts with washed-out pictures, sweaters, cords, and loafers. But beware the shoes, she said, shoes are the biggest giveaway. Undocumented aliens wear boxy shoes with ambitious heels. … “My daughter calls them Third World heels,” Lillian said, laughed, after the tea had calmed me down. Walk American, she exhorted me, and she
showed me how. I worked hard on the walk and deportment. Within a week she said I’d lost my shy sidle. (132-133, emphasis added)
This passage shows that Jasmine essentially uses mimicry in order to not only hide her illegal status but, as the reference to the “heels” suggests, also her ambition to obtain the position of power associated with the dominant culture. She does not simply take over American ways of dressing and acting because she wants to be “invisible,” but also because she thinks her invisibility will empower her. In this sense, her mimicry in this passage can be read as partly subversive, as she attempts to use the existing power structure to her advantage as an
immigrant. At the same time, however, in doing so, Jasmine indirectly acknowledges this existing power structure without fundamentally interrogating it, lending her mimicry a more opportunistic character.
Furthermore, this passage is also important because of Mukherjee’s apparent use of “Orientalizing discourse in order to criticize the hegemonic position of the [United States]” (Filipczak 126). By describing Lilian’s rather condescending reaction to Jasmine’s clothing and highlighting Jasmine’s need to wear American-style clothing in order to be accepted by the dominant culture, Mukherjee underscores “the inferior position of the ethnic subject,” who is immediately made aware of “the great dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Filipczak 126). Besides othering her, Lilian’s attitude towards Jasmine’s difference also reveals what Mukherjee has called the “dark side of the American will to transform the other, to control the other” (Mukherjee, “Female Multiplicity” 302).
Despite her conscious adoption of a more American appearance and behavior,
Jasmine remains aware of her cultural difference and appears to be wary to lose it, indicating a sign of resistance: “I checked myself in the mirror, shocked at the transformation. Jazzy in a T-shirt, tight cords, and running shoes. I couldn’t tell if with the Hasnapuri sidle I’d also
abandoned my Hasnapuri modesty” (133, emphasis added). Judith Oster points out that the
seek one’s image -- seems to assume greater urgency as well as clearer self-consciousness in bicultural texts” (60). She draws attention to how “the unexpected difference reflected in the mirror … express[es] identity disruption or formation” (Oster 60). This is certainly the case for Jasmine. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she realizes her transformation into her new identity and questions if the changes she observes are positive or not. Although Jasmine mimics aspects of the dominant culture, in this early stage of her identity formation she is afraid of losing her “Indianness”. This fear results in her initial desire to retain her difference from the dominant culture. She takes over certain aspects of American culture but makes sure not to lose her Indian cultural identity completely in the process. This retention of difference gives rise to what Bhabha calls a “partial presence” (“Mimicry” 127). In this stage of her identity development, Jasmine does not blindly imitate American culture, but desires to preserve a degree of difference in relation to the dominant culture. This awareness of her cultural difference and her desire to retain it result in “a reformed, recognizable Other, as a
subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, “Mimicry” 126,
emphasis in original). Nevertheless, in spite of her initial caution not to lose her Indian identity completely, her attitude towards her cultural difference does not remain the same after she leaves Lillian to stay with Professor Vadhera and his family in New York.
Upon her arrival in New York, Jasmine finds herself in a completely different environment than the one she got used to with Lillian in Florida. She spends the next five months living in with Professor Vadhera and his traditional Indian family in a “patriotic, nostalgic and homesick immigrant community” of Indians in Flushing, New York (Moslund 118). Jasmine’s experiences during these months cause significant changes in her attitude towards her newly developing hybrid identity. Back in Florida, she started to adapt to the dominant culture, but was still aware of her cultural difference and wary not to completely abandon her Indian identity and assimilate into American culture. Her experiences during her stay in the secluded Indian community of Flushing, however, cause her to change her outlook
on her cultural transformation. This change in attitude seems to show the first signs of a more assimilationist point of view regarding her developing cultural identity.
During her stay with the Vadheras, Jasmine feels constricted by the family’s expectation of obedience to Indian traditions. The contrast between her life in Florida with Lillian and her new life in New York causes her to reflect on the changes in identity she has already undergone. In Florida, she spoke and improved her English and wore American clothes. In New York, “[she] was a widow who should show a proper modesty of appearance and attitude” (145). The cultural expectations of the diasporic Indian community, represented by Professor Vadhera and his family, inevitably prevent Jasmine from expressing herself according to her own wishes. This tension between her personal desires and the expectations of the Vadheras becomes clear in her comments on learning English and watching American television:
I felt like my English was deserting me. During the parents’ afternoon naps, I sometimes watched soap opera. The American channels were otherwise never watched (Professorji’s mother said, “There’s so much English out there, why do we have to have it in here?”), but for the Saturday-morning Indian shows on cable. (144)
While Jasmine wants to learn more English and indulge in American culture through TV-shows, she is criticized by Professor Vadhera’s mother. A similar kind of friction arises when Jasmine is expected to adhere to traditional Indian dress codes:
Nirmala brought plain saris and salwar-kameez outfits for me from the shop so I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself or offend the old people in cast-off American T-shirts. The sari patterns were for much older women, widows. I could not admit that I had accustomed myself to American clothes. American clothes disguised my widowhood. In a T-shirt and cords, I was taken for a student. (144-145)
Her confrontation with the Indian community in New York reinforces her desire to become more American, further stimulating her to take over characteristics of the dominant culture. Jasmine feels stifled by the traditional roles and expectations she is faced with and wants to break away from them: “In this apartment of artificially maintained Indianness, I wanted to distance myself from everything Indian, everything Jyoti-like” (145, emphasis added). Her use of the word “everything” in this passage is crucial, especially considering her earlier cautious attitude not to lose her “Hasnapuri modesty” (133). Her experiences in the diasporic Indian community of Flushing trigger a change in her overall attitude concerning her cultural identity, causing her to rigidly deny her cultural difference and strengthening her willingness to completely adapt to American culture (Burkhart 18). Because of this change in her outlook and her increasing unhappiness while staying with the Vadheras, Jasmine eventually leaves them. She contacts Lillian’s daughter, Kate, who helps her find a job as an au pair in Manhattan.
Kate puts Jasmine in touch with Taylor and Wylie Hayes, a cosmopolitan couple who work as professors at a university in Manhattan and hire Jasmine to take care of their
daughter, Duff. Jasmine, who after her experiences in Flushing is eager to leave her Indian culture behind her and completely embrace American culture, is fascinated by the couple she is going to work for. She sees them and the lives they lead as the epitome of American culture, and is particularly amazed by the husband, Taylor, who, to her great surprise, treats her as an equal:
He smiled his crooked-toothed smile, and I began to fall in love. I mean, I fell in love with what he represented to me, a professor who served biscuits to a servant, smiled at her, and admitted her to the broad democracy of his joking, even when she didn’t understand it. It seemed entirely American. I was curious about his life, not repulsed. I wanted to know the way such a man lives in this country. I wanted to watch, be part of it. (167, emphasis added)
Not only is this passage significant as it shows the importance of Taylor to her as the
personification of American culture, but it also shows how much she wants to become part of that American culture. She wants to “watch” and see how “real” Americans live their lives in an attempt to subsequently imitate that kind of life. Seen through Jasmine’s eyes, Flushing and Manhattan symbolize two extremes. While the Vadheras and her life in Flushing
represent the native culture she is deliberately trying to suppress, the Hayeses and their home in Manhattan become representative of the American life into which she wants to assimilate completely.
While Jasmine desires to assimilate into American culture, she is not able to do so easily because her cultural difference visibly persists. She still does not speak English fluently and looks physically different from the people in her new surroundings. During her stay with the Hayeses, Jasmine tries to suppress her otherness and compensate for it by immersing herself in the culture of this new world she appreciates so much. As Anu Aneja points out, this “process of fabrication” simultaneously entails “an unmaking of the past” (73): “The love I felt for Taylor that first day had nothing to do with sex. I fell in love with his world, its ease, its careless confidence and graceful self-absorption. I wanted to become the person they thought they saw: humorous, intelligent, refined, affectionate” (171). In her attempts to become more Americanized, Jasmine does all the things she wanted to do but couldn’t when she lived in Flushing: “Profligate squandering was my way of breaking with the panicky, parsimonious ghettos of Flushing” (176). Together with her adoption of this new way of life, she also adopts a new name, Jase. For Jasmine, this new name given to her by Taylor becomes the symbol of a new kind of outlook on her life in the United States: “I liked everything he said or did. I liked the name he gave me: Jase. Jase was a woman who bought herself spangled heels and silk chartreuse pants” (176). Reinventing herself as Jase, she wants to completely break away from her native culture. Even when talking about her new identity, she immediately connects it to her adoption of clothes, which she considers to be typically
American. Mimicry continues to be an important part of her immigrant experience, but again, and this time even more distinctly, it proves to be only an opportunistic form of mimicry. Back in Florida, Jasmine still partly resisted losing her cultural difference and thus seemed to be using mimicry to some extent subversively. However, at this stage of her identity
transformation, she is unwilling (and unable) to use mimicry in a similarly subversive way by claiming a hybrid identity and exposing the constructed nature of the cultural polarities she thinks in.
While Jasmine herself is not able to expose the constructed nature of cultural identities, the novel does call attention to it. Mukherjee repeatedly alludes to the racial disadvantage of non-white immigrants in constructing a new cultural identity for themselves in America by emphasizing how Jasmine’s cultural, or more specifically, racial difference prevents her from fully assimilating into the dominant culture. Moreover, through Jasmine’s relationship with Taylor, Mukherjee seems to draw attention to the latter’s “well-intentioned but clearly paternalistic” behavior which is “reminiscent of an orientalist mentality” (Chu 135). Therefore, this time by means of her relationship with an American who does not deliberately want to erase or ignore her cultural difference, Mukherjee still suggests that American assimilation emphasizes rather than questions the purported superiority of white American society (Chu 135), which makes identity construction in the form of assimilation more complex for non-white immigrants.
Although Jasmine tries to suppress any form of perceptible cultural difference, particular aspects of her native culture still continue to manifest themselves. While she felt stifled by the cultural norms and traditions imposed on her in Flushing, her own thoughts still seem to give away the remnants of these cultural values. When looking out of her window to the university dorm buildings across the street, she is fascinated and shocked by what she sees:
I looked out into the dorm windows across Claremont Avenue. The windows were long, bright, shadeless rectangles of light. No window shades, no secrets. Barnard women were studying cross-legged on narrow beds, changing T-shirts, clowning with Walkmans clamped to their heads. They wore nothing under their shirts and sweaters. Men were in their room. Even on the first morning I saw naked bodies combing their hair in front of dresser mirrors. Truly there was no concept of shame in this society. (171)
The fact that Jasmine thinks that there is “no concept of shame” in American society seems to be part of her surfacing Indian norms based on the shame culture of her native country (Jacob 4). The shamelessness of the American students seems to suggest self-absorption and
indifference to others as opposed to the social control in communal cultures like the one in which Jasmine was raised. No matter how hard she tries to suppress her Indian culture, it keeps resurfacing in certain ways. As Bhabha suggests, mimicry of the colonized or immigrant individual produces “a reformed, recognizable Other” (“Mimicry” 126). This seems to be exactly what is happening to Jasmine. As an immigrant longing for assimilation into the dominant culture, she “suppress[es] [her] own cultural identity” (Naresh 16).
However, her efforts to do so are repeatedly in vain as she can never achieve “[a] total metamorphosis” (Gupta 4, emphasis added).
Despite her own desire to completely erase her cultural difference, her difference itself is not seen as a threat by Taylor:
Taylor didn’t want to change me. He didn’t want to scour and sanitize the foreignness. My being different from Wylie or Kate didn’t scare him. I changed because I wanted to. To bunker oneself inside nostalgia, to sheathe the heart in a bulletproof vest, was to be a coward. On Claremont Avenue, in the Hayeses’ big, clean, brightly lit apartment,
I bloomed from a diffident alien with forged documents into adventurous Jase. (185-186)
In spite of Taylor’s acknowledgement of her “foreignness” and his genuine interest in her Indian culture and past, she is very vocal in her dismissal of her cultural origins and “roundly critiques nostalgic clinging to repressive, Old-World practices” (Burkhart 17). Jasmine considers looking back and holding on to the culture she left behind a lack of courage. Her own awareness of her remaining cultural difference and the fact that she knows that Taylor appreciates it are not enough to embrace the formation of a hybrid identity. She deliberately chooses to reinvent herself with the name given to her by Taylor. The Hayes household is the place where, regardless of the lingering cultural difference she is trying to suppress, Jasmine truly feels that she has become a “real” American: “I became an American in an apartment building on Claremont Avenue across the street from Barnard college dormitory” (165). Drawing attention to her suppression of cultural difference, Sten Pultz Moslund points out that, at first, Jasmine is characterized by “heteroglossia,” but gradually “gives way to forces of monoglossia,” reducing the representation of “intentional hybridity” in the novel (116). Unfortunately for Jasmine, her newfound bliss does not last long. Just when she thinks that she has created a steady new life for herself in her new country, with her new identity, an uncanny coincidence forces her to leave her job with the Hayeses. While spending an afternoon in the park one day, her past catches up with her as she spots the man who killed her husband. As she fears for her own and her host family’s lives, she decides to leave New York and move to Iowa, signaling the next stage of her identity transformation.
In Iowa, Jasmine settles in the white rural community of Baden. She meets Bud and the two soon start living together. Her relationship with Bud shows a significant similarity with the relationship she had with Taylor. Both men enter Jasmine’s life and give her a new name and identity. Where Taylor names Jasmine “Jase,” signifying a crucial stage in her familiarization with American culture and society, Bud similarly creates a new identity for
Jasmine when he calls her “Jane”: “Bud calls me Jane. Me Bud, you Jane. I didn’t get it at first. He kids. Calamity Jane. Jane as in Jane Russel, not Jane as in Plain Jane. But Plain Jane is all I want to be. Plain Jane is a role, like any other. My genuine foreignness frightens him” (26). While the two men show similarities with respect to their creation of a new identity for Jasmine, there is also an important difference between them. Whereas Taylor was aware of and genuinely interested in Jasmine’s Indian cultural background, Bud chooses to ignore that part of her history completely. He simply treats her as a native-born American, ignoring any evidence of her cultural difference because it makes him feel uneasy. Bud feels threatened by her otherness and Jasmine can only relieve his anxiety “by settling into the role of
domesticated exotic” (Carter-Sanborn 577). It is noteworthy that despite her conscious refusal to negotiate the two parts of her cultural identity, her perceived otherness already seems to cause the anxiety that Bhabha mentions when suggesting that cultural difference, because of its ambivalence, addresses the anxiety of the dominant culture, as this culture is not able to easily identify and categorize the “otherness” it perceives. Even without her actively embracing a hybrid identity, Jasmine’s presence in the white rural community of Baden seems to challenge some of the assumptions held by its inhabitants.
Many critics have criticized Jasmine because of its supposedly unambiguous praise of assimilation. Shushma Tandon argues that Jasmine is an “ebullient novel offering a spiced-up version of the classical recipe of assimilation into [the] dominant culture. ... [T]he central problem of the novel is that it is silent about the conditions that make such assimilation possible” (144). In the same vein, Susan Koshy argues that “Mukherjee’s celebration of assimilation is an insufficient confrontation of the historical circumstances of ethnicity and race in the United States and of the complexities of diasporic subject-formation” (69). I would argue the opposite is true, however. Jasmine’s persistent difference and resulting “Otherness” underscore the complexities of assimilation for non-white immigrants in the United States. Her statement that “Plain Jane is all [she] want[s] to be” (26) indicates
Jasmine’s clear desire to assimilate without having to be reminded of her (cultural) difference. However, through the reactions of the people around her in Baden, Mukherjee highlights the question of “[w]ho is allowed the luxury of plainness” in a society where “plainness is a staunchly racialized form of citizenship” (Reddy 365). It is precisely by emphasizing Jasmine’s desire for assimilation into the dominant American culture, and simultaneously revealing the dominant culture’s (implicit) reaction of othering her, that Mukherjee actually underscores the difficulties of identity construction for a non-white woman in a predominantly white American society.
In Jasmine’s new community in Baden, Bud is certainly not the only one who feels uneasy about her cultural difference. Bud’s mother shows a similar kind of attitude towards her. Although she says she likes Jasmine a lot, “even better than [Bud’s ex-wife]” who is from the same Iowan community (16), she does not feel comfortable with her Indianness and refuses to acknowledge it:
Mother Ripplemeyer tells me her Depression stories. In the beginning, I thought we could trade some world-class poverty stories, but mine make her uncomfortable. Not that she is hostile. It’s like looking at my name in my passport and seeing “Jyo—” at the beginning and deciding her mouth was not destined to make those sounds. … She doesn’t mind my stories about New York or Florida because she’s been to Florida many times and seen enough pictures of New York. (16)
As is the case with her relationship with Bud, Jasmine’s mere difference makes Bud’s mother feel uneasy, even when Jasmine is not actively asserting it. Aneja points out that immigrants are often expected to “erase [their] difference completely” (74). Indeed, the exchange of cultures in Baden seems to be “a oneway process” only (Banerjee 238). Consequently, just as she accepts “the role of domesticated exotic” (Carter-Sanborn 577) with Bud and does not assert her difference to challenge the assumptions of the dominant culture in relation to her
own minority identity, she also rejects the opportunity to share her own stories with Mother Ripplemeyer because she does not want to confront her, and by extension the dominant culture, with her otherness and create anxiety. Bud and his mother’s reactions to Jasmine’s difference further underscore “the historical and political situations that have written out for her a predetermined place within the hierarchy of race, culture, gender and class” (Aneja 74). Ironically, Jasmine’s earlier “flirtation with ‘multiplicity’” in the form of all the different identities she takes on as part of her journey as an immigrant results in “a domestic and domesticated fantasy, a classic American dream of assimilation” (Carter-Sanborn 583), pushing her further away from constructing a viable hybrid identity.
Bhabha argues that “[h]ybridity represents that ambivalent ‘turn’ of the discriminated subject into the terrifying, exorbitant object of paranoid classification -- a disturbing
questioning of the images and presences of authority” (“Signs” 155). The ambivalence that would be created because of this “turns the discursive conditions of dominance into the grounds of intervention” (Bhabha, “Signs” 154). In other words, “the discriminated subject, incompletely contained by the power and paranoid knowledge invested in its constitution, participates in, confronts, and unsettles that very power” (Carter-Sanborn 581). However, Jasmine does not manage to successfully unsettle the preconceptions and prejudices of the community, let alone its power structures. Where it was first only she herself who denied and suppressed her Indianness, she is now also faced with an environment that does not want to acknowledge it. If Jasmine earlier was unwilling to create a hybrid identity by acknowledging her cultural difference and deriving empowerment from it, she now is unable to do so
because she accepts, and even internalizes, the xenophobia of her new environment and its persistent dismissal of her difference.
While being denied her cultural difference, Jasmine is simultaneously faced with stereotypes concerning Indian culture. This becomes particularly apparent when she is invited to the University Club in Dalton, Iowa. She meets Mary Webb, a white American woman
who firmly believes in reincarnation and wants to talk to Jasmine about it. Because of Jasmine’s Indian heritage, she assumes that she must believe in reincarnation as well. When she shares intricate details of her alleged reincarnations, Jasmine’s face makes “a funny look,” which prompts Mary to say, “This can’t be new or bizarre to you. Don’t you Hindus keep revisiting the world?” (126), projecting her view of the stereotypical Indian onto Jasmine. A few moments later, something similar happens when a waiter arrives to take Jasmine’s order. After she tells him that she would like pork chops, Mary says: “I thought you’d be vegetarian” (126). Mary’s attitude and comments are in line with what Bhabha calls “differentiations, individuations, [and] identity effects” towards the non-dominant culture, which underscore her (assumed) power over Jasmine (“Signs” 153). Bhabha proposes hybridity as a response to this attitude of the dominant culture in the form of a “strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal” (“Signs” 154). This does not happen, though. Jasmine does not actively confront Mary by disavowing the stereotypes she is faced with. Instead, “[t]hose who would insist that there is such a thing as knowable ‘Indianness’ compel her to distance herself from what they believe to be Indian” (Bahri 151), pushing her towards further assimilation into the dominant culture without challenging it. While Jasmine could embrace a hybrid identity and “distance herself from what [the dominant culture] believe[s] to be Indian” (Bahri 151) by confronting them with a form of Indianness that would dismantle their preconceptions, she deliberately chooses not to do so.
Furthermore, it is important to note the irony employed by Mukherjee in this passage. While Jasmine attempts to completely assimilate into the dominant American culture, she is constantly made aware of being “the Other” because she is not a white American. Again, this time through her use of irony in describing the interaction between Mary and Jasmine, Mukherjee seems to draw attention to the complexities of identity construction by suggesting that “hyphenization is only imposed on non-white Americans” (Mukherjee, “Beyond
expose that America’s ideology of assimilation is not as readily an option for all immigrants to the country and that non-white immigrants remain being seen as not “completely”
American, despite their efforts at constructing an American cultural identity for themselves. By means of her ironic tone in this passage, Mukherjee sheds light on the exclusionary nature of American assimilation. While she has been outspoken about her pro-assimilationist views regarding immigrants, she does not refrain from criticizing how America’s Eurocentric attitude towards assimilation “categoriz[es] the cultural landscape into a ‘center’ and its ‘peripheries’” and consequently fails to “deliver the promises of the American Dream” to its citizens of non-European descent (Mukherjee, “Beyond Multiculturism” 33).
When talking about the new identity she takes on in Iowa, Jasmine says about herself: “In Baden, I am Jane. Almost” (26, emphasis added). Again, we are reminded of Bhabha’s assertion about mimicry as creating “a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not
quite” (“Mimicry” 126). The reader is constantly reminded of Jasmine’s difference from the
dominant host culture. Her environment’s reaction to her visible Indianness manifests itself in what Bhabha calls “the desire for a reformed” but at the same time “recognizable Other” (“Mimicry” 126). The reactions of the dominant American culture she faces in Baden are centered on reminding her of her cultural difference, while at the same time also “taming and pacifying [her] otherness through a normative Eurocentric homology” (Moslund 128). This tension between Jasmine and her new environment therefore complicates her apparent desire for complete assimilation, or at least her ability to fully assimilate, as there seems to be an unintentional manifestation of certain characteristics of hybridity. Her mere difference and her recognition of it unintentionally challenge “static notions of Otherness” (Bahri 137). Because of this partial display of (inadvertent) hybridity, it would be too simplistic to dismiss any trace of cultural hybridity in Jasmine’s self-conception, but the fact that she does not actively position herself in the Third Space and fails to assertively subvert the hegemonic
relationship between the dominant host culture and her native culture does ultimately preclude the construction of a hybrid identity.
The complexity of Jasmine’s identity is even further emphasized in the novel by her comments on the differences between herself and Bud’s adoptive son from Vietnam, Du. While she acknowledges that both of them are immigrants, she explicitly refers to Du, but not to herself, as culturally hybrid: “My transformation has been genetic; Du’s was hyphenated. We were so full of wonder at how fast he became American, but he’s a hybrid. … His high-school paper did a story on him titled: ‘Du (Yogi) Ripplemeyer, a Vietnamese-American’” (222). Kristin Carter-Sanborn points out that Du is able to find an equilibrium and
“[establish] a ‘delicate thread of ... hyphenization’” which “prevents his identity as a
Vietnamese from being effaced by the dominant culture” (581). Similarly, Jill Roberts draws attention to how “Du’s Vietnamese past catches up with him in Iowa and he welcomes this intrusion” (91). In contrast to Jasmine, he does not suppress his native culture and allows it to be part of his cultural identity. As a result of this particular attitude, Du is able to construct a hybrid identity for himself and eventually leaves the community in Baden to reunite with his long-lost biological sister. Jasmine, on the other hand, does not really seem to be able to work out a successfully hybrid identity as envisioned by Bhabha. As Carter-Sanborn suggests, “ideally, [Jasmine] would be able to tap into what Gloria Anzaldúa has called the ‘mestiza consciousness,’ a ‘tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity’ like that
demonstrated by [Du]” (581), but she ultimately fails to do so, which makes her “difference” gradually morph “into sameness” (Moslund 131).
At the end of the novel, Taylor and Duff find Jasmine in Baden. Taylor has split up with Wylie and asks Jasmine to join them and start a new life together in California. Jasmine decides to accept their invitation and leave her life in Baden behind, moving further “West,” both “physically and metaphorically” (Faymonville 53): “I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane,” she says (240). This final move seems to suggest a symbolic
return to her identity as “Jase,” the most ardently assimilationist of her previously assumed identities, emphasizing her definitive break with any kind of hybridity she might have manifested earlier in the novel. Furthermore, her revived desire to completely adopt American culture also seems to show itself through her decision to leave Bud behind and pursue her own happiness, influenced by “the Western belief in individualism” (Moslund 109), as opposed to the more communal nature of the Indian culture she now completely rejects. The ending of the novel evidently underscores Jasmine’s eventual Americanization. Despite the complexity of her cultural identity as seen by her manifestation of certain hybrid traits throughout her transformative journey as an immigrant throughout the novel, Jasmine ultimately does not succeed in successfully positioning herself in Bhabha’s Third Space and constructing a sustainable hybrid identity for herself.
While Jasmine eventually completely embraces assimilation in favor of assuming a hybrid identity, it is important to emphasize that the narrative strategy employed by
Mukherjee suggests an ironic distance between the protagonist (and her transformations) and Mukherjee’s views of identity construction as an author. While Jasmine’s decisions
throughout the novel display an unequivocally pro-assimilationist attitude towards migration, Mukherjee herself seems to reflect critically on the choices Jasmine makes. As she explains in an interview with Beverley Byers-Pevitts, “Jasmine is only Jasmine. Jasmine should not be the spokesperson for all Indians or all non-white immigrants into this country” (Mukherjee, “Interview Byers Pevitts” 197). Accordingly, Jasmine, as a cultural work, does not embrace assimilation in the same way as the titular protagonist does. While Mukherjee has asserted in her interviews and non-fictional writings that immigrants need to assimilate into the culture of their new country (e.g., Mukherjee, “Beyond Multiculturism” 34), there is a difference between the kind of assimilation Jasmine exhibits in the novel and the kind of assimilation Mukherjee speaks of. Whereas Jasmine represents a form of assimilation in which the cultural difference of the (non-white) immigrant needs to be completely erased in order to fit
into a white, European mold, Mukherjee herself is critical of this form of assimilation and “has sought to redefine [Americanness] in her fictional and non-fiction writings” as not singular but rather made up of “diverse experiences and people of various origins” (Nyman 159). This view is further supported by her comments on the reciprocity of assimilation:
As a writer, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show that I (and the hundreds of thousands of recent immigrants like me) are, minute-by-minute, transforming America. The transformation is a two-way process; it affects both the individual and the national-cultural identity. The end result of immigration, then, is this two-way transformation. (Mukherjee, “Beyond Multiculturism” 34)
Ultimately, by suggesting an ironic distance between Jasmine the character and Jasmine as a cultural work, Mukherjee draws attention to how non-white immigrants coming to the United States “have to face the Orientalist gaze,” (Filipczak 125) even if they are willing to
assimilate into American culture. Therefore, through her novel, Mukherjee essentially exposes how American assimilation is centered around a white, Eurocentric narrative which implicitly forces non-white immigrants to use opportunistic mimicry as part of their identity construction in their attempts to become “true” Americans.
Chapter 3:
Revisiting the Past to Reconcile with the Present: Bicultural Identity (Re)construction in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents deals with the García family’s political exile from
the Dominican Republic to the United States and the effects of their forced migration, together with the ensuing intercultural encounters, on the production of their cultural and gender identities. In the Dominican Republic, the Garcías are among the island’s wealthiest and most privileged families, who claim that their origins can be traced back to the
Conquistadores. Due to the father’s opposition to the dictatorial regime of Rafael Trujillo1,
the family is uprooted from their homeland and forced to start a new life in New York. The novel deals with the family’s difficulties in adapting to their new country and draws attention to the intergenerational tensions arising from the daughters’ desire to adjust to their new surroundings and the parents’ concurrent fear of losing their daughters to America and its cultural values, which differ significantly from their native Hispanic ones (Mujcinovic 180). “[W]riting about Latina women who move back and forth between cultures,” Alvarez draws attention to the fact that the “notion of ‘Americanization’ is ambiguous at best and certainly not some seamless process” (Himsel Burcon 124). Structurally, the novel is divided into three sections, each dealing with the García girls’ adult lives in the United States, their teenage years, and their childhood in the Dominican Republic, respectively. The novel is narrated in reverse chronological order and makes use of shifting focalization, allowing the protagonist of the novel, Yolanda García, to reflect on the family’s lives and to reconstruct the traumatic events which ultimately contributed to their current fragmented sense of (cultural) identity and come to terms with them.
1 The novel contains several references to Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), whose dictatorial regime ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, marking “one of the bloodiest periods in Caribbean history” (Galván 49). Just like the Garcías, Alvarez and her family were exiled from the country due to “her father’s role in a plot to overthrow Trujillo” (Carter 325).
In this chapter, I will focus on the four García sisters and the different ways in which their cultural identities develop as a result of their immigration to the United States. As in my analysis of Jasmine in the previous chapter, I will make use of Bhabha’s theoretical concept of cultural hybridity in order to investigate to what extent the García girls are able to mediate both parts of their cultural identities. While all four of the García sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía, find themselves in an in-between position between their native
Dominican culture and the American host culture, struggling with a sense of not belonging fully to either (Luis 840), their reactions to this position of liminality differ significantly for each sister. I will argue that while all four of the García sisters (initially) try to reconcile their American and Dominican identities, only Yolanda, the novel’s main protagonist, is able to construct a (partially) hybrid identity as theorized by Bhabha. In contrast, the other three sisters, despite their initial efforts to mediate their multiple cultural identities, seem to find themselves in a liminal space of unresolved cultural conflict. In investigating the sisters’ ability to negotiate their cultural identities, the novel’s narrative strategies play a pivotal role. David Cowart argues that throughout the novel, “the four siblings come to represent the redshifting fragments of a single, once integral identity after the diasporic big bang” (51). As a result, Yolanda’s perspective, with which the novel formally begins and ends, and which is also the most prominent one throughout the novel, seems to function as an overarching consciousness looking back on not only her own, but also her sisters’ lives to trace back the source of their identity fragmentation. Consequently, even though the focalization and first-person narration frequently shift to the three siblings, their perspectives are, I argue, filtered through Yolanda’s consciousness. Therefore, they, unlike Yolanda, are ultimately precluded from obtaining a cathartic moment of insight regarding their troubled sense of identity in the narrative present. In the following sections, I will examine how Carla, Sandra and Sofía, both individually and together, negotiate the various challenges posed by their forced migration to the United States and its attendant intercultural encounters. Subsequently, I will focus on
Yolanda in more detail and examine how she, despite recurrent identity conflicts and
accompanying (psychological) problems, is relatively more successful in constructing a form of cultural hybridity for herself. Before my analysis of the sisters, however, I will first discuss the specific narrative strategies employed by Alvarez more extensively in order to shed more light on how the novel as a whole reflects on identity construction.
One of the most striking features of Alvarez’s novel is her adoption of “the narrative strategy of multiperspectivity” (Mitchell 39), using shifting focalization and alternating first-person and third-first-person perspectives throughout the text. This narrative strategy is crucial as it effectively shapes the novel and the ways in which it represents the García family’s
experience of identity fragmentation and their differing reactions to it. As Catherine
Romagnolo points out, “perspective and questions of identity” in the novel are interconnected with each other as “[e]ach shift in point of view signifies the beginning of a new truth, a new version of the story, as well as the birth of a new subjectivity” (104). Alvarez’s use of shifting narrative perspectives allows her to present the reader with “competing versions of events for the readers to make sense of,” enabling them to empathize with the García sisters who are attempting to make sense of their culturally liminal position and its attendant ambiguities (Nas 130). Furthermore, Alvarez herself also calls attention to the influence of her Dominican background on the narrative structure of the novel. In an interview with Marta Caminero-Santangelo, she explains how her cultural heritage does not only shape the themes of her novel, but also its form:
I think this multiplicity of perspectives comes from my culture. We are often members of big, bungling, tribal families in our Latino culture. You’re never just one person. … I’m interested in that multiplicity, that multiculturalness, of each person. Not just the singular self, which is so much of the Western tradition; the hero on his journey, on his Odyssean voyage. I’m much more interested in the many-mirrored reality which is very much a part of where I came from. (Alvarez, “Territory” 20)
The “multiplicity of perspectives” mentioned by Alvarez ultimately results in the creation of an ambiguous and polysemic text, which “invoke[es] a site of borderlands and creat[es] a postcolonial, i.e. hybrid, stance” (Nas 130). In this sense, the form of the novel as a whole is “mirroring the shifting and multiple nature of postcolonial identity itself” (Nas 133).
Therefore, just as the García sisters, and particularly Yolanda, in their liminal position between Dominican and American cultures, are trying to (re)construct their identities by attempting to “deconstruct the very borders of American society as a hegemonic institution” (Schultermandl 13), so too does Alvarez deconstruct “linear narratives of immigration, assimilation and nationhood” (Saldívar 1) in order to create a hybrid text which reflects the multifaceted nature, ambiguity and contradictions of cultural identity negotiation.
Besides the use of textual fragmentation and multiple narrative perspectives, the novel’s reverse chronological order is also crucial to our understanding of Yolanda’s search for identity. As Mieke Bal points out, “[p]laying with sequential ordering is not just a literary convention,” but also “a means of drawing attention to certain things, to emphasize, to bring about aesthetic or psychological effects, to show various interpretations of an event” (81). This is certainly the case for How the García Girls Lost Their Accents where the reverse chronological order highlights “the backward-looking nature of immigration and coming of age” through a simultaneous unearthing of the psychological effects their immigration has had on Yolanda and her sisters (Lovelady 29). The structure of the novel thus “creates a systemic temporal regression that provides an exploration of causation rather than a drama of consequences” (Nagel 154). Besides signifying a desire on the part of the immigrant
individual to (re)construct her identity, the non-linear narrative of the novel also has the effect of fueling “the reader’s uncertainty and instability,” which, again, enables them to identify with the García girls and the ambiguous position they find themselves in (Barak 163). As the overarching consciousness of the novel, representing not only herself but also her sisters, Yolanda’s desire to construct an identity by (re)constructing the past is
characterized by the prominence of storytelling, memories and recurring visits to the native country by various characters. Jacqueline Stefanko argues that, by tracing Yolanda’s search for (cultural) identity, Alvarez “decenter[s] and question[s] her own return to the island via a narrative that moves backward in time” (65). Ultimately, by means of employing multiple perspectives in a fragmentary, non-linear narrative, Alvarez emphasizes the
multidimensionality and concurrent complexity of identity construction for immigrant individuals who find themselves in a position of liminality in their attempts at reconciling both native and host cultures.
3.1 Carla, Sandra, and Sofía
At the beginning of the novel, in the narrative present, we are introduced to the García sisters as adult women. It soon becomes clear that all of them, albeit in different ways, are troubled because of the effects of their forced displacement to the United States, as children, years earlier. We learn, for instance, that the oldest sister, Carla, has been through a divorce and is now married to the American psychiatrist she was counseled by in order to cope with her nervous breakdown. Significantly, struggling herself with identity, she becomes a child psychologist who often feels the need to analyze her family members’ behavior and actions, “cloaking her confusing dualities with protective, clinical names” (Cox 145). Furthermore, it is important to note that, in terms of her cultural identity, Carla seems to be, at least
outwardly, largely assimilated into the dominant American culture as she does not show any visible interest in her Dominican side. As the novel progresses, and the narrative regresses into the past, we obtain more insight into the source of her current psychological state.
While all four of the García sisters arrive in the United States as children, they each initially experience their immigration differently because of the different ages at which they emigrate to the United States. Carla is the oldest of the four sisters, which causes her to have
a relatively more difficult time adapting to her new life in the United States. This becomes particularly clear during the family’s celebration of their first year in their new country. She feels homesick as a result of her difficulties adjusting to the United States, which reveals itself in a wish as she blows out the candle on the flan: “Dear God, … Let us please go back home, please” (151). Despite her intense desire to return to her native country because she feels out of place in her new surroundings, Carla soon realizes that it is “a less and less likely prospect” (152). Her feelings of displacement are partly caused by her inability to fit in with the white American children at her school, who bully her due to her perceived “otherness”:
Every day on the playground and in the halls of her new school, a gang of boys chased after her, calling her names, some of which she had heard before from the old lady neighbor in the apartment they had rented in the city. … “Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!” … Another yanked down her socks, displaying her legs, which had begun growing soft, dark hairs. “Monkey legs!” he yelled to his pals. “Stop!” Carla cried. “Please stop.” “Eh-stop!” they mimicked her. “Plees eh-stop.” (153)
Carla is relentlessly made fun of because she looks and sounds different from her American “blond” and “freckle-faced” schoolmates (154). Manuela Matas Llorente calls attention to the interrelatedness of “ethnic and linguistic differences” in Carla’s “sense of displacement,” as represented in this passage (71). Similarly, Catherine E. Wall points out that “standard gender- and ethnicity-based schoolyard harassment assumes linguistic overtones” in Carla’s encounter with xenophobia (127). Carla is self-conscious about the way she speaks English and remarks that “[s]he hated having to admit this since such an admission proved, no doubt, the boy gang’s point that she didn’t belong here,” underscoring the interconnectedness between correctly speaking the language of her new country and her sense of belonging (156). Being bullied as a child because of her being perceived as different makes a lasting impression on her. She is made to feel “other” and, ashamed of her cultural difference, she
