Life as a Reluctant Immigrant: An Autoethnographic Inquiry (original) (raw)

Voices at Mother's Kitchen: An Autoethnographic Account of Exile

Qualitative Inquiry, 2006

In this article, I use an autoethnographic approach and draw on my memory to relive my interactions with my mother and my wife together with my experiences before my arrival to the U.S. My writing is an attempt to understand my departure from Cuba and my relationship with my mother and my wife. I discuss concepts of collective unconsciousness and the reluctant immigrant and how the historically constituted power relations define the identity of Cuban exiles. I highlight the battle of the politics of passion and the politics of affection-two polar opposites. As the politics of affection undermine the goals of the politics of passion, the moral imperative of what ought to be is not achieved and becomes an antecedent to exile.

Exile and Professional Identity: On Going Back to Cuba

Cultural Diversity & Mental Health, 1996

The author tells the story of her lifelong attempts to create a coherent, complex cultural identity from herfamily's multiple diaspora legacies, and the impact of these struggles on her personal and professional development. She emphasizes the intergenerational conflicts created by the sociopolitical circumstances of her generation's Cuban immigration experience, and progressive attempts to include her Cuban identity in her sense of self An unexpected lesson in the politics and history of psychoanalysis, itself an immigrant movement that abandoned its social conscience to survive in exile, catalyzed a return to Cuba and a greater inclusion of its social values in her personal and professional lives. ©1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. * exile * Cuba • complex cultural identity • culture and professional development * Thanks to Lillian Comas-Diaz, Alice Rossi, and Castellano Turner for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Discourses on Migration: A Cuban Case Study

We don't seem to leave the country, (..) searching the borders and open coasts yearning for the lost shores the warm waters of former lovers and the perfection of yesterday, (..) -Achy Obechas, the Boat

Planting the Seeds of Change: Im/migrant Life Writings

Journal of International Women S Studies, 2005

The subject of land, working it and owning it, is an inherent part of Chicano/a autobiography, as exemplified by the life writings of Elva Treviño Hart. The term "im/migrant" connotes transition and mobility, crossing borders, shifting parameters, all of which are fundamental facts of life for Chicano/a authors. A collective sense of community proves to be the only stasis in the narrators' young lives, and the migrant camps become a microcosm in which societal and cultural rituals are conducted, despite the lack of control over the constantly shifting spaces they occupy. Being Mexican American, however, signifies a precarious existence in both the Mexican (home, barrio, field) and the Anglo world (school, marketplace), and this coexistence creates a tension between the collective and the individual, which results in an "open wound," as expressed by Gloria Anzaldúa. From the outset, Elva Treviño Hart depicts her life on the periphery in terms of work, class, ethnicity and gender. Her physical detachment at the edge of the field is symbolic of her sense of alienation at home and in Anglo society. Like Treviño Hart, many Chicanos/as portray their family's need to claim their own space, to declare ownership, and to procure a sense of stability in an often alien(ating) world. Ultimately, however, many of these authors reconcile the two worlds they navigate by separating from their community through the process of writing and self-discovery. In so doing, they embrace their culture and become empowered, not devalued, by their difference. Thus, these Chicano/a writers help to restructure the traditional notion of autobiography by (re)claiming their space and redefining and renegotiating the literary and cultural parameters which once were perceived to be immutable.