Running In (and Out) the Family Postcolonial Family Novels in Perspective

The genre of the family novel can be identified in many postcolonial literary cultures. Initially, it was often read as an example of “national allegory” (Jameson 1986), thus considering family narrative in a tight relationship with postcolonial nation-building, but this theoretical framework has been later criticised from different perspectives, ranging from post-national to feminist critiques. Furthermore, the genre of the postcolonial family novel has been refashioned due to the emergence of diasporic narratives, leading to the diffusion of the “postcolonial fictions of adoption” (McLeod 2006). Nowadays, the high competition in the global literary market – namely, with family novels and sagas in the US literary market – drives this genre towards highly individualised, as well as hybridised, outcomes. While focusing, in particular, on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz and Lara ([1997] 2009) by Bernardine Evaristo, this survey of family novels across different literary traditions aims to show the intrinsic porosity, as well as the strenuous resistance, of the genre.

Visão de mundo e bifocalidade em Faïza Guène e Junot Diaz

Traçando um paralelo entre Doria e Lola, protagonistas respectivamente de Amanhã, numa boa (2006), de Faïza Guène e A Fantástica vida breve de Oscar Wao (2009) de Junot Díaz, este estudo analisa o relacionamento materno e o despertar da sexualidade, em duas personagens do contexto de fluxos migratórios. Com base nos conceitos de mundividência de Carlos Reis e de bifocalidade de Steven Vertovec, este artigo discute as modalidades de interação entre mãe e filha, isto é, entre primeira e segunda geração de atores sociais, com uma história de migração. Na primeira parte, a atenção se volta para os conflitos entre mãe e filha e para o modo como elas adaptam suas visões de mundo, a fim de concretizar suas existências, respectivamente na França e nos Estados Unidos. Na segunda parte, o foco recai sobre a experiência do despertar da sexualidade e o modo como a mãe marroquina de Doria e a progenitora dominicana de Lola influenciam essa etapa da vida de suas filhas.

Invisible or inaudible? The representation of working-class immigrants in the short fiction of Junot Díaz

In Junot Díaz’s short story collections, Drown (1996) and This Is How You Lose Her (2012), sound plays a crucial role in the representation of the experiences of the Dominican migrants in the United States who populate their pages. The collections show the liminal situations which the stories’ characters face, emphasizing their shifting acoustic environments and the pressure to shape one’s own sonic identity to meet the demands of the new language and culture. The experiences of these Dominican migrants – particularly how they are targeted by the Americans they encounter because of their accents – reflect the politics of a cultural neo-racism which differs from the discourse of colonial Otherness but which bears the same monocultural logic. As such, the stories’ migrants become silenced rather than invisible. At the same time, a belief in the power of the Other’s personal and culturally specific voice as a transformative element is emphasized in these collections with Díaz’s use of Spanish and the narrator’s persistent presence throughout all of the stories.