On Transcultural Presence and Reparative Reading Practice
Rethinking Belonging and Transcultural Transformation in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11271803 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Efthymia Lydia Roupakia (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 104-126 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-23 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlac040 |
| OpenAlex | W4294349399 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 15 |
I offer a reading of the opening chapter of Julia Alvarez’s novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) through Bill Ashcroft’s approach to “transcultural presence.” I argue that Alvarez’s opening chapter casts the experience of transcultural presence as a complex and conflicted emotional space that challenges the reader’s appreciation of belonging beyond received interpretative frameworks. I further draw on Sten Pulz Moslund’s theoretical engagement with the “presencing” of place through a “topopoetic mode of reading.” I propose that the presencing of place in the opening chapter of Alvarez’s novel encourages a located, embodied way of reading transformative moments of transcultural presence. Finally, I suggest that Alvarez’s ethics of postcolonial, transcultural writing encourages what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has referred to as “reparative reading.” “Reparative reading” is illustrated in terms of the literary text’s opening up toward the “volume” of transcultural complexity, an opening up that calls for self-reflexive interpretative caution and care for locative particularity when engaging with transcultural literature
Garcia · Humanities · Linguistics · Pedagogy · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Reflexivity · Sociology · Transformative learning · Anthropology · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Travel Writing and Literature
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Sensuous Geographies
Truth and Consequences
Presence
The Violence of Translingual Identity in Kazim Ali'sBright Felon
A New Beginning
Literary History, Allegory, and Semiology
Julia Alvarez and the Anxiety of Latina Representation
A Search for Identity in Julia Alvarez's How the GarcÍa Girls Lost Their Accents
Re-Producing a Nationalist Literature in the Age of Globalization
The violence of rhetoric
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |