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Madness, Entropy, Paradox: The Legacy of Political Violence in Loida Maritza Pérez's Geographies of Home

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

JENNIFER KRAUSE
JENNIFER KRAUSE*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Vanderbilt University. Email: jennifer.a.krause@gmail.
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Abstract

This article adds to the conversation surrounding what it means to be Latino/a within the United States by considering Loida Maritza Pérez's Geographies of Home. By focussing on the plight of Marina within the novel, one can begin to look at this Dominican-American as not just a madwoman and victim of diaspora, machismo, and class; instead, she is a character who questions archetypal iterations of Latino/a identity even as she reinforces national and transnational stereotypes. Such a close reading of Pérez's novel allows us to reconfigure ideas of race, displacement, and hyphenation in American society.

Type
Immigration Forum
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 329 - 345
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 José Itzigsohn and Carlos Dore-Cabral, “The Manifold Character of Panethnicity: Latino Identity and Practice among Dominicans in New York City,” in Agustín Lao-Montes and Arlene M. Dávila, eds., Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 319–36, 320.

2 Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban American Way (Austin, TX: University of Austin Press, 1994), 5.

3 Ibid., 5.

4 Flores, Juan, “Nueva York, Diaspora City: Latinos between and beyond,” ReVista (Spring 2000), 8–10Google Scholar, 10.

5 Loida Maritza Pérez, “A Conversation with Loida Maritz Pérez,” in Penguin Readers Guide to Geographies of Home (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 5–8, 5–6.

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10 Ibid.

11 Chancy, Myriam J. A., “Subversive Sexualities: Revolutionizing Gendered Identities,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 29, 1 (2008), 51–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 65.

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13 Ibid., 13.

14 Loida Maritza Pérez, Geographies of Home (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 41.

15 Ibid., 41.

16 Ibid., 41.

17 Richardson, 5.

18 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 100.

19 Ibid., 31.

20 Chancy, 65.

21 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 32.

22 Andrés L. Mateo, Mito y cultura en la era de Trujillo (Santo Domingo, República Dominicana: Editora Manatí, 1993), 154–55.

23 Howard J. Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development: The Methods of Control in Trujillo's Dominican Republic (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968), 52.

24 Ibid., 54.

25 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 87.

26 Ibid., 244–45.

27 Richardson, “Migratory Experience,” 5.

28 Alcaide Ramírez, “I'm Hispanic, Not Black,” my translation.

29 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 16.

30 Mateo, 119.

31 Chancy, “Subversive Sexualities,” 65.

32 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 17.

33 Ibid., 18.

34 Richardson, 16.

35 Alcaide Ramírez.

36 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 13.

37 Ibid., 112.

38 Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 56.

39 Mateo, 124, my translation.

40 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 113.

41 Richardson, 16.

42 Pérez, Geographies of Home, 284.

43 Ibid., 275.

44 Ibid., 287.

45 Mujcinovik, Fatima, “Multiple Articulations of Exile in US Latina Literature: Confronting Exile Absence and Trauma,” MELIUS, 28, 4, Speech and Silence: Ethnic Women Writers (2003), 167–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 169.

46 Richardson, 16.