Patchwork creations: acculturation and resistance in contemporary immigrant fiction

Abstract

Cultural hybridity encourages an uncritical acceptance of the dominant culture, which can conceal normative categories unsympathetic to Third World characters. My dissertation attempts to distinguish between Homi Bhabha's hybrid ¿mimics¿ and culturally resistive postcolonial writers to complicate Bhabha's theorization of colonial discourse. The three writers treated here are Bharati Mukherjee, Meena Alexander and Cristina Garcia. Whereas the subalterns occupy a space of double displacement, sharing in neither the narrative of nationhood nor the culture of imperialism, Mukherjee's empowering of such characters has led her to create binaries of the East and West, equating oppression and freedom respectively. As an alternative to such discourse, Alexander represents a diasporic feminist vision that questions patriarchal narratives of nation and identity. Alexander shows how an earlier generation of feminists were concerned with examining the failed promise of the ¿modern¿ nation, which declined to address adequately the needs of women. As a second generation feminist, Alexander positions herself in relation to the images of fragmented nations. In this sense, her texts critique traditionally revered concepts as well as personalities to dismantle patriarchal constructs and negative stereotypes. Like Alexander, Cristina Garcia rewrites national history through a backward glance. This look back includes both official versions of history and counter representations in the form of memories and repressed accounts. By juxtaposing Cuban characters with those of the exiled, Garcia provides an insider's look into the island and its politics, a view long denied Western readers. Thus, by developing histories to compete with the interpretation of social reality, Garcia reconstructs both gender and Cuban identities.