Versione classicaVersione mobile

Écritures dans les Amériques au féminin

 | 
Dante Barrientos-Tecun
, 
Anne Reynes-Delobel

Écritures féminines transnationales et porosité générique

In Search of a Transnational Identity

Carmen Tafolla’s “Malinche”

Stéphanie Durrans

Abstract

This analysis will focus mainly on Carmen Tafolla’s “Yo soy la Malinche” (from her landmark collection of poems, Curandera, 1983), with occasional references to other poems. It shows how Tafolla’s skillful use of languages allows her to destabilize linguistic borders in a world of fluctuating identities, with the consequent result of constructing a transnational Latina identity that transcends geographical, cultural and political borders. Tafolla plays on the would-be duplicity of the historical character as she emphasizes the instability of the naming process and brings to the fore Malinche’s actual victimization by the patriarchal system. Such strategies of reversal combine with her will to break down the barriers between registers and genres since “La Malinche” was also meant for dramatization and consequently exhibits a double status as both a written and spoken text. Traditional oppositions between margins and the centre are thus deconstructed to the profit of an emphasis on liminality as both a state of flux and a space of creativity. Such strategies might have something to do with the peculiar situation of Chicanos with respect to the migration process (since, as pointed out by Tafolla herself, her ancestors never crossed the border, the border crossed them, which consequently invalidates traditional constructions of the migratory experience).

Sorry! Internal error. Please contact the webmaster and try reloading the page. 

Il testo e gli altri elementi (illustrazioni, file importati) possono essere utilizzati con OpenEdition Books License, se non diversamente specificato.

Acquista

Cerca su OpenEdition Search

Sarai reindirizzato su OpenEdition Search