Rewriting American Democracy: Language and Cultural (Dis)locations in Esmeralda Santiago and Julia Alvarez

This article talks about how two American authors of Latin-Caribbean descent, Esmeralda Santiago and Julia Alvarez, inscribe their native language into the discourse of American literature, contributing to a more diverse picture of what American culture is. Thus Alvarez's and Santiago's te...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Bilingual review 2007, Vol.28 (1), p.3
Main Author: Schultermandl, Silvia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authors
Caribbean
Chile (Santiago)
Cultural Pluralism
Democracy
Ethnic Groups
Hispanic Americans
Immigrants
Multicultural Education
Santiago
United States
United States Literature
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article talks about how two American authors of Latin-Caribbean descent, Esmeralda Santiago and Julia Alvarez, inscribe their native language into the discourse of American literature, contributing to a more diverse picture of what American culture is. Thus Alvarez's and Santiago's texts not only renegotiate ethnic immigrant experiences of exile and diaspora, they open up possibilities for the emergence of new discourses on the constituency of American society. Because they are rewriting American democracy by adding diversity to the canon of American literature and by explicitly writing Latin-Caribbean immigrant experiences into American society, Santiago and Alvarez raise issues about the present-day status, constituency, and definition of American society in general. Santiago's and Alvarez's works thus make apparent the fact that the question of "where you're at" concerns not only ethnic immigrants in the United States, but American society at large. (Contains 9 notes.)
ISSN:0094-5366