Abstract:
This thesis examines the construction of autobiographical subjectivity in two U.S. Latina
autobiographies, Judith Ortiz Cofer’s Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a
Puerto Rican Childhood (1990) and Marjorie Agosín’s The Alphabet in My Hands: A
Writing Life (2000). In a comparative way, this study follows Sidonie Smith’s and Julia
Watson’s five-point classification of the constitutive processes of autobiographical
subjectivity in Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (2001);
that is, experience, memory, embodiment, identity, and agency. This thesis identifies two
culturally specific strategies of constructing subjectivity that enrich the U.S. Latina
autobiographical tradition: the use of the Latin American storytelling tradition, and the
emphasis on “poetic truth.” The storytelling tradition shapes subjectivity in three ways:
first, as a discursive pattern that forms the fragmented subject; second, as a discursive
pattern that predicates Latina autobiographical subjectivity on female experience,
embodiment, and identity; and that underwrites gender, sexuality, class, race, and
ethnicity discourses; third, as a tradition that conflates the collective and personal
memories of the subject. As a specific Latina rhetorical strategy, “poetic truth” affects the
construction of subjectivity in two ways: first, it validates the use of imagination and
creativity in the representation of reality; second, it also serves as an empowering
strategy. The second chapter establishes the theoretical framework of this study, situating
U.S. Latina autobiography within the tradition of women’s writing and discussing the
configuration of the specificity of Latina autobiographical subjectivity. The third chapter
studies comparatively how the storytelling tradition operates at the nexus of female
experience, embodiment, and identity in Ortiz Cofer’s and Agosín’s texts. This analysis
demonstrates that the major difference between their texts regarding the function of
storytelling is in the autobiographical subjects’ identification of discourses that are
central to female oppression. The subject in Ortiz Cofer uses storytelling to interrogate
gender discourse, whereas Agosín’s subject employs the storytelling tradition to uncover
inequality in power relations between classes. The fourth chapter explores how these
texts incorporate personal and communal memories in the representation of the past. It
demonstrates that the validation of “poetic truth,” as a combination of imagination,
creativity, and emotions, disidentifies with traditional autobiographies by claiming the
primacy of emotional and subjectively interpreted experiences in the construction of
subjectivity. In both Ortiz Cofer’s and Agosín’s texts the autobiographical subjects
envision writing as a crucial tool for cultural survival, and also conceptualize the political
and cultural roles of women as spokespersons for their respective ethnic communities.
