LITR 5731 Seminar in Multicultural Literature

American Immigrant Literature
   

 [Abstract & Table of Contents for LITR thesis by Kristin Hamon] 

ABSTRACT

Traversing the Border of Two Cultures:

Redefining Mexican American Narrative

 

Kristin M. Hamon, M.A.

The University of Houston Clear Lake, 2011

 

Thesis Chair: Craig White, PhD.

 

Mexican immigrants to the United States, especially when compared to immigrants who leave their homelands far behind by sea or air, develop special relationships with both their home country and their new one: a border culture in which people cross and re-cross from one collective identity to another, varied by many individual and family narratives. As every journey begins with a single step, movement between available identities is propelled forward by specific purpose—whether an emotional journey out of a barrio microcosm or a spatial journey toward El Norte. Diverse Mexican American literary texts describing physical and cultural movement to and from real and imaginary homelands drive this ethnic group’s immigrant narrative to spawn a number of related but unique identities and trajectories involving both immigrant and minority characteristics while maintaining ties to a larger national narrative essential to American culture.

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Chapter

INTRODUCTION.……………………………..……….………………………..1

 

      I.          CHAPTER ONE

 

Imagining the Journey…………………………………………………19

 

    II.          CHAPTER TWO

 

Physical Relocation and Identity Reformation……………………...27

A Reason to Leave: Self-improvement……………………………...37

Another Reason to Leave: Future Generations…………………….40

Leaving as Rite of Passage………………………………...………...44

 

  III.          CHAPTER THREE

 

Crossing Over: Emotional and Cultural Transitions………...……..47

Different Generations, Different Journeys……………………...…..50

Crossing Identities: Border Culture as Shared History………...….54

Rhetoric of Place and Identity…………………………………..……57

 

  IV.          CHAPTER FOUR

 

Cultural Crossings and Intersecting Identities…………….…..……60

Free Will: The Journey of Choice…………………………………….61

The Accidental Traveler……………………………………………….67

Immigrants as Migrants……………………………………………….76

Undocumented Immigrants………………………………….………..82

 

NOTES……….…………………………………………………………………………90

 

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………91