Abstract
In previous chapters, it was suggested that the documentaries aired by the PBS program POV tended to approach migration as a phenomenon with universal, group, and individual planes of experience. To put this hypothesis to the test, the present chapter delves into the universal experience of motherhood, as lived by Latinx migrants and as translated from the real to the reel in two POV documentaries: Our House in Havana (Olsson, 2000) and My American Girls: A Dominican Story (Matthews, 2001). In order to capture the essence of these films’ discourses on migrant mothers, the chapter holds their content up to the light of established literature on motherhood. More specifically, the chapter argues that Stephen Olsson and Aaron Matthews paint the picture of two mothers who cannot seem to find a middle ground between their children’s newly adopted American belief system and their own Latinx norms and values. Slowly but surely, these migrant mothers transform before the documentary makers’ lens, as they discover that prioritizing their own happiness can be more selfless than their previous self-abnegation.
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Notes
- 1.
In the following chapters, all direct quotes will be transcriptions. Occasionally, they will contain spoken language that may be considered (grammatically, syntactically, lexically, etc.) incorrect. To be respectful of the speakers’ idiolects, it was decided not to add the adverb “sic” to the transcripts whenever a supposed linguistic error was recorded.
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Sanchez, A.J. (2022). The Universal Experience of Migrant Mothers. In: Discourses of Migration in Documentary Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_4
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