Telling the Untold Stories
Crossing Nation, Gender and Text in Marta Rojas'El columpio de Rey Spencer
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2177902 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lesley Feracho (0009-0004-7730-6603, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 65-74 |
| Publication date | 2010-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-2222 • E-ISSN: 1744-2230 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17442220903506933 |
| OpenAlex | W2010681426 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
For women writers of the Caribbean as well as for larger marginalized communities, the relationship between oral traditions and written texts is a part of the defining thread of Caribbean historiography. In telling these stories that examine social and political issues, women writers many times also address challenges of uniting artistic creation with social commentary. In this article I draw on Waugh and Hutcheon's definitions of metafiction to examine the use of such texts by women writers of the Hispanophone Caribbean in order to highlight narrative strategies of historically marginalized groups to contest hegemonic constructions of the nation. In particular, I will demonstrate how the Cuban novel El columpio de Rey Spencer by Marta Rojas demonstrates a metafictional critique of homogenizing discourses through its examination of storytelling and the subaltern, tradition and progress. Through the creation of what González Mandri describes in her 2006 book Guarding Cultural Memory as hybrid texts that ‘... negotiate between telling their individual stories and the history of black communities and cultures in Cuba, specifically ... of women of the African diaspora ...’, Rojas’ deconstructive project creates interconnected, alternate articulations of individual and collective identities that reveal the multilingual, transnational Cuba
Art · Collective memory · CONTEST · Creole language · Diaspora · Hegemony · Historiography · Literature · Narrative · Oral tradition · Orality · Politics · Sociology · Storytelling · Subaltern · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |