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Type of Document Dissertation Author Rohrleitner, Marion Christina URN etd-07232007-153953 Title Intimate Geographies: Romance and the Rhetoric of Female Desire in Contemporary Historical Fiction by Caribbean American Women Writers Degree Doctor of Philosophy Department English Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Glenn Hendler Committee Co-Chair Kate Baldwin Committee Co-Chair Ivy G. Wilson Committee Member J. Javier Rodriguez Committee Member Joseph Buttigieg Committee Member Theresa Delgadillo Committee Member Keywords
- Cuban revolution
- independence movements
- massacre
- twentieth century
- Roosevelt Corollary
- US-foreign policy
- women's literature
- immigration
- Cuba
- Haiti
- Dominican Republic
- Loving Che
- In the Name of Salome
- The Farming of Bones
- Cristina Garcia
- Ana Menendez
- Julia Alvarez
- Edwidge Danticat
- romance
- historical fiction
- Latina literature
- Caribbean American literature
- Salome Urena de Henriquez
- Camila Henriquez
- Jose Marti
- Amabelle Desir
- Sebastien Onius
- Trujillo
- Che Guevara
- racism
- whiteness
- rememory
- J. Michael Dash
- counterculture of the imagination
- second generation immigrants
- postmemory
- transnationalism
- Americas
Date of Defense 2007-07-05 Availability restricted Abstract In this dissertation I argue that by focusing on different forms of female desire contemporary Caribbean American women writers reinvent the literary genres of the romance and the historical novel and, in doing so, extend notions of what constitutes US-American literature and history. They create alternative accounts of US-Caribbean political and cultural relations that underscore the connection between women’s desire for intimacy and national belonging on the one hand, and autonomy and independence on the other hand. I analyze the depiction of female desire in three contemporary English-language novels by US authors with origins in the hispano- and francophone Caribbean: Haitian American Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998), Dominican American Julia Alvarez’s In the Name of Salomé (2000), and Cuban American Ana Menéndez’s Loving Che (2003). These authors challenge traditional representations of women’s participation in nation building which link the female body to national territory and limit women to being suffering mothers, virgin lovers, or seductive traitors. Instead they privilege the embodied experiences of women based on specific material and historical conditions. This emphasis on the personal, intimate aspect of history foregrounds the implication of women in creating historical discourse and in developing transnational identities in the Americas.
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