Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration pp 207-221 | Cite as
The Dominican Diaspora Strikes Back: Cultural Archive and Race in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Abstract
While scholars of African diasporic discourse such as Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall have tended to focus on the historical and social relationships between Africa, the Anglophonic Caribbean, and Britain, much work still needs to be done by incorporating the Spanish Caribbean and its diaspora in the United States into the critical conversations of the triangular African/Black Atlantic.1 Silvio Torres-Saillant, the prominent scholar of the Dominican diaspora, has contributed much critical and historical groundwork for understanding the connection between racial discourse and literature of the Dominican Republic and Dominican immigrants and their descendents, the diaspora, who arrived in waves, due to economic hardships, to the mainland United States in the 1970s and onward.2
Keywords
Immigrant Woman Dominican Republic Official History Star Trek African HeritagePreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Works Cited
- Céspedes, Diógenes & Silvio Torres-Saillant. “Fiction Is the Poor Man’s Cinema: An Interview with Junot Díaz.” Callaloo 23.2 (2000): 892–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo o Puro Cuento. New York: Vintage, 2002.Google Scholar
- de Moya, Antonio E. “Power Games and Totalitarian Masculinity in the Dominican Republic.” Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses. Ed. Rhoda E. Reddock. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 2004. 68–102.Google Scholar
- Díaz, Junot. Drown. New York: Riverhead, 1996.Google Scholar
- —. “Driven.” Conversations with Ilan Stavans. Ed. Ilan Stavans. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. 47–51.Google Scholar
- —. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Harcourt Books, 2007.Google Scholar
- Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
- Kakutani, Michiko. “Travails of an Outcast.” The New York Times. September 4, 2007.Google Scholar
- Sharpe, Jenny. Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archaeology of Black Women’s Lives. Minnesota: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003.Google Scholar
- Suárez, Lucía. The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2006.Google Scholar
- Torres-Saillant, Silvio. “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity.” Callaloo 23.3 (2000): 1086–1111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar