Revista de estudios norteamericanos - 2015 - Nº 19

URI permanente para esta colecciónhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/51690

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Review. Rocío Cobo Piñero. Sonidos de la diáspora. Blues y jazz en Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, y Gayl Jones
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Frías Rudolphi, María
Pixar’s New Fairy Tale Brave: A Feminist Redefinition of the Hero Monomyth
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Domínguez Morante, Laura
Literature has been traditionally shaped by the paradigm of Western culture, characterized by the hegemony of white, male ideals. The literary impact of these biased ideas is considerably evident in the fairy-tale genre, relevant as the traditional vehicle for certain values. This article uses a feminist approach to examine the fairy-tale form and analyzes Pixar’s fantasy film Brave (2012) as illustrative of the gradual substitution of the male hero monomyth for new literary paradigms in which the female experience is constructive and fundamental: The heroes’ quests offer an insight into Merida’s forced heterosexual alliance and Elinor’s experience on motherhood.
The (Mis)Education of “The American Girl” in Europe in Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Cortés Vieco, Francisco José
Set during the “Roaring Twenties,” Anita Loos‟s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes revisits the myth of “The American Girl,” dyed as a “dumb blonde” and plagued with humor, not only to twist the traditional gender paradigm of female victimization at the hands of a male tyrant, but also to vindicate a unique identity for the United States, eventually released from transatlantic influences. The heroine Lorelei travels to Europe on a Grand Tour to “improve her mind,” but she actually reveals the smart use of her “stupidity” to “educate” men to spend money on her, to hunt the wealthiest potential husband, and to discover that there is no better place than home. Unburdened from the necessity of supporting her creature, this journey is the perfect excuse for Loos to mock the presumed cultural superiority of the Old Continent, its social hierarchies and the appreciation of its artistic treasures.
All-Woman Jazz Bands and Gendered Beboppers: Gayl Jones and Gloria Naylor’s Jazz Fiction
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Cobo Piñero, Rocío
Traditionally, jazz has been identified with male performers and writers. Thus, the aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, it underlines the significant role of women instrumentalists and bandleaders in the formation of a jazz counterculture, particularly during World War II; on the other, it connects the cultural meanings and the technical devices of 1940s bebop to Gayl Jones‟s novels Corregidora (1975) and Eva‟s Man (1976), and Gloria Naylor‟s The Women of Brewster Place (1982) and Bailey‟s Cafe (1992). This essay places special emphasis on bebop quoting, a jazz technique that has conventionally represented a site for the performance and signification of masculinity, but also allows female musicians and writers to deconstruct and question identity stereotypes associated with black womanhood.
The Complex Interrelations of Home, Body, Identity and Otherness in Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Numann, Claus Peter
Juxtaposing two terms, at once separated by and connected through a slash, the title of Tony Kushner‟s play Homebody/Kabul (2001) raises questions about the constitution of identity and its relation to place. The play suggests the home and the body, evoked by the title‟s first term, to act as safeguards for a stable and unified identity in privileged regions while the homes and bodies of other places are continually exposed to the threat of violence. Systemic and symbolic violence (Žižek) are revealed to enforce totalizing boundaries (Bhaba) projecting a homogeneous Other that serves as an object to be conquered. At the same time this homogeneous Other is a precondition for the projection of a stable and unified hegemonic self. In the final analysis, however, the play shows how any project of a stable and unified self is radically undermined by the heterogeneity and the unappropriable alterity of the Other.
Hybrid Subjects and Fluid Identities in Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives: the Stories of Frances Slocum and Olive Oatman
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Ortells Montón, Elena
During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, adoptions of white children by Native American tribes and interracial marriages were extremely disturbing issues for Euro-American society. Women such as Eunice Williams, Mary Jemison or Frances Slocum chose not to return to the “civilized” territory they had been forced to abandon. For others such as Olive Oatman and Cynthia Ann Parker, their restoration was extraordinarily traumatic since indigenous culture had left a profound imprint on both their bodies and their minds. The stories of these transculturated women complicate the notions of identity and “belonging” and invite us to think about modern conceptualizations of “race.” Hence, it is my intention to show how in spite of the countless efforts of the patriarchal and imperialistic stratum to use the voices of the captive women to circulate a hegemonic cultural model that relied on the superiority of the white race and the male gender, most of their stories challenge cultural expectations about whiteness and masculinity and surreptitiously debunk orthodox conceptions of ethnicity and gender. The accounts of both Frances Slocum and Olive Oatman are presented here as illustrative of those exceptional “voices” who, making use of the socially sanctioned cultural resources of their times, broke through the prevailing structures of power and authority and managed to circulate atypical stories of dauntless female figures. Their narratives unveil much about how white women experienced and revised the binarisms on which Western ideologies of race, class, and gender relied.
Women’s Network behind Frances Perkins’s Appointment
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Torres Marquínez, Catalina
This article explores and analyses a particular group of middle-class social reformers who, sharing a mutual kinship directed towards social welfare during the Progressive era, achieved political prominence during the New Deal period, developing powerful networks as a means of transcending and defying the limited domestic sphere, and acquiring a larger voice in the public arena, a male-dominated realm for years. Looking back to the first women’s groups from the antebellum period to demonstrate the origin of the first political organization and the outset of a new concept about female friendship, this article maintains the hypothesis that Frances Perkins’s unprecedented appointment as the first female Secretary of Labor in 1933 was due to a two-fold reason: the response Florence Kelley aroused in her and the women’s web tactics, having Mary Dewson at the center, to deconstruct the politics of the time empowering her in an androcentric world.
Literary Monuments: Home as a Commemorative Novel.
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Vega-González, Susana
When asked about the genesis of her novel Home, Toni Morrison argues that it was her intention to “take the scab off the 50s” in the United States, dig underneath and bring to the fore the silenced (hi)stories concerning African Americans. In the fashion of a true archeologist—a literary one—Morrison, once again, rips the veil of enforced deliberate oblivion and commemorates the lives, ordeals and achievements of the historically and socially dispossessed. This essay aims to explore and analyze such commemoration and how it is undertaken. Home, and its (re)creation, is an important object of remembrance and commemoration in this novel but it is not the only one. War veterans, Jim Crow victims, female culture bearers, quilters, love, self-love, agency, identity, survival and nature are all paid tribute to and celebrated. As she did in previous works such as Beloved or Jazz, from succinct glimpses of a historical event Morrison creates a literary work in which history, imagination and memory intermingle. In Home, commemoration occurs against the backdrop of the Korean War, racism and segregation in the pre-Civil Rights Movement, but the main focus is placed on how those events affect characters and their lives. In the commemorative literary project that Morrison’s ouvre represent, Home stands—like its man and its horses—as a true beautifully crafted literary monument.
Repurposing ‘Disreputable Genre Materials:’ E.L. Doctorow’s Subversion of Hegemonic Gender Configurations in Welcome to Hard Times
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Ferrández San Miguel, María
Welcome to Hard Times (1960) is not a conventional Western. The novel constitutes E.L. Doctorow‘s first attempt to turn what at the time was considered ―disreputable genre material‖ into a work of fiction that could yield relevant meanings for contemporary society. This is crucially achieved through the subversion of hegemonic gender configurations in the novel. Hence, the purpose of this article is to assess the extent to which Welcome to Hard Times demythologizes traditional views of the West, as portrayed in the classical Western. The focus will be on the representation of gender, highlighting Doctorow‘s preoccupation with identity and its artificial configuration. Thus, this paper will explore the novel‘s representation of alternative models of masculinity and manliness. I will also examine its transgressive attitude towards femininity and the female voice, both at a thematic and at a structural level, as well as its denunciation of gender violence.
Walking out on Language: Verbal Spaces in Junot Diaz’s “Invierno”
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) Gerke, Amanda
Junot Díaz has gained much attention for his pervasive themes of social, cultural, and linguistic identity through his multilingual writing. In “Invierno,” This Is How You Lose Her (2012), Díaz presents a crossing of spatial and verbal concepts that creates a system of isolation and oppression through a story of reclusion and imprisonment. This article places “Invierno” within a linguistic framework in which verbal, psychological, and physical categories involve movement, and thus, possess a spatial dimension. The multidisciplinary perspective from which this story is analyzed reveals the notion of imprisonment as a complex and dynamic interplay of the material and the immaterial, the physical, and the verbal. This analysis rests on Foucault’s theories of knowledge and power, as well as on van Dijk and Fairclough’s developments in critical discourse analysis, and de Certeau’s concepts of language spaces.
The Haunted House in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2015) López Ramírez, Manuela
In A Mercy Toni Morrison tackles the multilayered and strikingly powerful Gothic “haunted” house metaphor from a female perspective. Her revenants and hauntings are not just individual, but also historical, political and cultural manifestations. Through the Gothic dwelling, Morrison explores the fragmented personal and familial identities, conventional gender arrangements, failed domestic ideology, racist and colonial past, etc., in a patriarchal society dominated by whites. Her transgressive rewriting draws attention to the impact of slavery and racism and, consequently, to the othering of ethnic females, especially blacks. Morrison not only depicts the unspeakable horrors of American history, but also provides ways for its regeneration, such as women’s empowerment and their struggle for self-definition. Morrison’s revisitation of the “haunted” house formula offers an alternative female perspective on American identity and history.

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