Living on the hyphen: diaspora, identity and memory in Jamaica Kincaid s Annie John / Lucy and Esmeralda Santiago s When I was Puerto Rican / Almost a woman

Abstract

This dissertation aims at investigating the development of the identities of diasporic subjects in forms of narratives in which memory plays a crucial role. Autobiographies and memoirs have awakened the curiosity of many people interested in the processes of identity construction of individuals who live in singular realities and the accounts they give of their own lives. Thus, the crescent interest in diasporas and the ensuing fragmentary dislocations provoked by the distancing of one s roots and the contact with different cultural codes might legitimize autobiographical narratives as strategic ways to synthesize the niches of identification of authors who experienced a diasporic rupture. In this way, when analyzing these kinds of narratives, one should be attentive to the specificities of some writers who have gone through diasporic processes and how they resort to their personal recollections in order to, in literary terms, express their subjectivities. Bearing all these ideas in mind, it is my intention to use Jamaica Kincaid s Annie John and Lucy, and Esmeralda Santiago s When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a woman as sources of analysis as well as samples of the development of diasporic identities in autobiographical narratives