Sobre seleções e apagamentos: história, memória e política de identidade em Caramelo de Sandra Asneros e Memory Mambo de Achy Obejas

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the role of memory in the de-naturalization of history and in the articulation of an identity politics in Caramelo by Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros and in Memory Mambo by Cuban-American writer Achy Obejas. This work focuses on the narrative strategies and themes used by the authors in order to subvert traditional history. In Caramelo, through the use of poliphony and of paratextual and metafictional elements in the narrative, Cisneros crosses the boundary between the public and the private, interweaving history and memory. Starting from the personal recollections, which Mexican Soledad passes on to her granddaughter Lala, Cisneros narrates the history of chicanos, giving it a memorial character. In Memory Mambo, Obejas also crosses the boundary between the public and the private through the interlacement of the contradictory memories of the Casas y Molina a family of immigrants/exiles and the history of Cuba. As Obejas problematizes memory in exile, she breaks up with a tradition in the Cuban literature of exile of producing nostalgic historical representations, fixed on an idyllic past. Thus, both writers question history s status of absolute truth, emphasizing its contradictory and artificial nature and highlighting, at the same time, the constructed nature of the modes of representation.