Race, Gender, and Propriety in Dominican Commemoration
This chapter argues that Salomé Ureña’s canonization through the twentieth century required various forms of ghosting. The first half of the chapter traces her commemoration in sculpture, imagery, and biography to show how her celebration as a national icon relied both on her phenotypical whitening and on the elision of some of the strongest desires expressed in her work. The second half of the chapter examines writings about Ureña by two twenty-first century feminist and diasporic Dominican women writers, Julia Alvarez and Chiqui Vicioso. Through close reading analysis and a black diasporic feminist lens, the chapter proposes that feminist and critical race theories, the increase in Dominican literacy rates, and the growth of a diasporic Dominican community with a different vocabulary of race allow Alvarez’s and Vicioso’s recuperative texts to compete with other dominant narratives. Their portrayals model narratives of belonging in which women and nonwhite subjects can be legible as full subjects with myriad desires.