Colonial Subject’s Search for Nation, Culture, and Identity in the Works of Julia Álvarez, Rosario FerrÉ, and Ana Lydia Vega

"Henao deserves credit for her valiant attempt to look at important matters ... her book is interesting because it looks equally into Spanish- and English-language novels by women from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic." - CHOICE

“Henao dissects some novels and short stories by three successful female writers from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and lays bare for us the underlying richness of meaning and messages therein contained. She shows some of the reasons why Latin American writers are unique not just owing to their writing styles, but because of their preoccupations too…..Henao’s analysis of some representative works by Vega, Ferré, and Álvarez touches on key issues related not only to literature, but also to culture and society. By exploring these narratives, she unveils the relationships between characters and larger structures, whether they are intellectual constructs, cultural frames or international power relations…..Questions of identity, social and racial cleavages, gender oppression, cultural and national self-determination are but a few of the themes that give substance to the writers’ stories.” – Segundo Pantoja, PhD, Director , Center for Ethnic Studies, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY

“…Henao demonstrates how the narratives of Julia Álvarez, Rosario Ferré, and Ana Lydia Vega challenge the traditional and stereotypical representation of women and contest official accounts that may wrongly characterize women, the poor, and the least favored races. In addition to exploring how these ‘fictions’ refocus history, Professor Henao observes that some of their characters point to a hidden colonizer in even the most colonized among us….Henao leads us to rethink our present and past readings of canonical Latin American literature and to reexamine our own positions of privilege and how this privilege may determine or limit our own responses.” – Carlos H Hortas, Hunter College, CUNY

Preface; Introduction
• Stratification and Privilege
• Self-Reflective Narrative
• Configurational Discourses
• (Re)(De) Forming Maroonage
• Conclusion
Appendix; Bibliography; Index