Open AccessThe Hemispheric Approach of Julia Alvarez’s Novels
Author(s) -
Mónica Fernández Jiménez
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
reden. revista española de estudios norteamericanos/revista española de estudios norteamericanos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2695-4168
pISSN - 1131-9674
DOI - 10.37536/reden.2020.2.1381
Subject(s) - postmodernism , postcolonialism (international relations) , essentialism , racism , politics , perspective (graphical) , sociology , criticism , literature , capitalism , aesthetics , history , art history , anthropology , philosophy , gender studies , art , political science , law , visual arts
This article analyses three novels by Julia Alvarez–How the García Girls Lost their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and In the Name of Salomé (2000)– through the lenses of Hemispheric American Studies. Inspired by the teachings of Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s theoretical work The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (1992), I contend that the categorisation of these novels as Latino literature is not enough to describe all of their richness. These novels portray throughout their pages social, political, and artistic relations that tie all of the Americas together, and their analysis benefits from the essays written by Caribbean post-essentialist critics who developed, during the 1990s, a discourse based on the cultural supersyncretism of the islands that helps us to understand the postmodern globalised worlds as it stands. The novels by Alvarez reflect these theories, as they portray the realities of a New World constricted by the workings of race and racism, capitalism, and postcolonialism.