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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2024
“I Am Who I Am.”
That statement may strike readers unfamiliar with the Spanish equivalent, “Soy quien soy,” as a mindless tautology. But in Early Modern Spanish literature, characters regularly voiced it in moments of conflict, when their security in their hierarchical society came under pressure. The repeated outbreaks of violent racial, ethnic, religious and political conflicts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries illustrate the impulses and the passions behind “I am” statements – “I am … white / black / Asian / Christian / Jewish / Muslim / a man / a woman / other.” In this chapter I explain their import in Zayas's writings and in her time.
We read multiple versions of “ser quien soy” (to be who I am) in Zayas's novellas. In N. 1, “Taking a Chance on Losing,” when Félix leaves Jacinta with his aunt during the year the pope has ordered the lovers to be separated, Félix leaves her there “with the charge to be who you are and who I am” [con la deuda de ser quien eres, y quien soy]. Three years after Félix's death, when Jacinta first responds to Celio's attentions to her, she says, “In so doing I understood I was doing him no little favor, given who I am” [en ello, entendí hacerle harto favor, siendo quien soy], and “being who I am, it was not right to love anyone but that one who would be my legitimate husband” [siendo quien soy, no era justo querer si no era al que había de ser mi legítimo marido]. Fabio repeats the “being who you are” phrase after hearing Jacinta's story in the wilds of Montserrat. He insists on taking her back to a Madrid convent, telling her that there “you will live more in conformity with who you are” [estarás más conforme a quien eres]. Moreover, he attributes his own insistence to “the obligation I have to be who I am and the obligation I owe to Celio, my friend, from which I plan to emerge with many thanks, if I have luck in leading you away from this intention, so contrary to your honor and reputation.” [la obligación en que me has puesto con decirme tu historia … tan contrario a tu honor y fama]. Note in this last citation how the “who I am” identity phrase is joined to honor and reputation.
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