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LITR 5731 Seminar in
Multicultural Literature American Immigrant Literature |
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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
purposewhether 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 groups
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
