This chapter focuses on the ambivalent nationalism evident in the celebration of the first national Dominican poet, Salomé Ureña (1850-1897). Studying poems, letters, speeches, and essays by Ureña and some of her contemporaries, the chapter contends that the strong desire for Ureña’s poetry coexisted with the elite’s generalized assumption that the ideal citizen subject was a white man. It argues that Ureña’s embodiment of Dominican nonwhiteness combined with her status as a respectable woman allowed Dominicans of the intellectual and ruling elite to satisfy two intertwined impulses: to construct a national identity that could explain Dominican difference from Haiti, and, as such, justify a seat at the global table; and a tacit acceptance that a nonwhite woman such as Ureña could only be considered “the muse of the nation” because Dominican territory had a history of black freedom and leadership.
