{"id":157,"date":"2017-09-17T23:57:24","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T03:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=157"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:18","slug":"el-salvador-of-homeland-and-diaspora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/09\/17\/el-salvador-of-homeland-and-diaspora\/","title":{"rendered":"El Salvador: Of Homeland and Diaspora (?)"},"content":{"rendered":"
When I first began thinking about how my literary research interests could develop into potential topics for my senior thesis, I knew, broadly, that I wanted to focus on Latin American\/U.S. Latinx literature. My desire to pursue this led to coursework on U.S. Latina\/o Literature and further research on Latin American\/Latinx literary traditions. As I read, I became aware of the scholarly focus predominantly on Mexico and the Caribbean (notably, Puerto Rico and Cuba) when discussing Latinxs. My specific interest in Central America and El Salvador has meant further refining my focus to search for these keywords within my findings on Latin American\/Latinx literatures. Due to limited literary scholarship on Central American literatures, I maintain this broader category of Latin American\/Latinx literatures as critical keywords\u2013\u2013however, I aim to complicate this pan-ethnic category by also recognizing how it has dwelled on particular national narratives over others. I also aim to understand the role of Salvadoran literature within the two broader categories of Central American literature and Latin American\/Latinx literatures.<\/div>\n

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As I have begun to focus more closely on Salvadoran literature, one of the binaries that emerged was writings of homeland versus writings of diaspora. These became keywords that I had identified as the two main groups of Salvadoran writings. What I came to realize later on, however, were the temporal attachments that I had begun to associate with each \u2018branch\u2019 of writing. I imposed a temporal restriction on writings of homeland as limited to pre-civil war, and writings of diaspora as strictly post-civil war. My interest in the civil war\u2019s sociopolitical significance (including events leading up to the war and its aftermath) in shaping twentieth century Salvadoran literature led me to ignore the possibility of \u2018diaspora\u2019 before the war as well as to ignore the continuation of \u2018homeland\u2019 writings in the post-war area. As stated in Writing Analytically, \u201cwhen you find a binary opposition in an essay, film, political campaign, or anything else, you have located the argument that the film, essay, or campaign is having with itself, the place where something is at issue,\u201d (95). The binary opposition that I had identified revealed the tension in negotiating what happens to narratives and literatures when they inhabit different physical and temporal spaces. Specifically, the question that emerged was: what does Salvadoran literature look like at origin versus beyond the homeland, in \u2018diaspora\u2019?<\/div>\n

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I want to complicate \u2018diaspora\u2019 as a guiding keyword by thinking about how else we might refer to the experiences of people of Salvadoran origin living in the U.S. This is relevant to my literary research because these keywords will help me to select theoretical approaches. Some key terminology related to but distinct from \u2018diaspora\u2019 that come to mind are: immigrant, migrant, forced migration, exile, refugee. Many of these terms carry different political implications that affect the critical framing and context of how I will approach my discussion of Salvadoran literature.<\/div>\n
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Searching for definitions is useful here in gaining a better grip of what the terms specifically mean; for example, considering the differences between \u2018migration\u2019 and \u2018immigration,\u2019 in which the former refers broadly to movement across space and the latter implies a permanent move. While diaspora is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as \u201cthe state or fact of having been dispersed from one’s homeland or point of origin,\u201d there is not necessarily a political implication in this term. On the other hand, \u2018exile\u2019 and \u2018refugee\u2019 have more political significances; exile is defined as \u201cprolonged absence from one’s native country or a place regarded as home, endured by force of circumstances or voluntarily undergone for some purpose. Also: an instance or period of this.\u201d The OED definition of a refugee is \u201ca person who has been forced to leave his or her home and seek refuge elsewhere, esp. in a foreign country, from war, religious persecution, political troubles, the effects of a natural disaster, etc.; a displaced person.\u201d Considering the sociopolitical significances of these terms will enable a better analysis of my literary scope and raise specific questions for the primary texts I will consider. For example, one of the leading contemporary Salvadoran writers is Horacio Castellanos Moya, who has spent most of his life away from El Salvador, in exile. Does Castellanos Moya belong to homeland or to \u2018diaspora\u2019? Is ‘diaspora’ an appropriate word to use when we are referring to circumstances of forced migration? What do these literary texts gain or lose from being referred to as belonging to \u2018diaspora\u2019 to \u2018homeland\u2019 or to literature of \u2018exile\u2019\/’refugee’ writing?<\/div>\n

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Bibliography:<\/div>\n

\u201cDiaspora.\u201d \u201cImmigration.\u201d \u201cLatino, Latina, Latin@.\u201d \u201cMigration,\u201d \u00a0Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2007.<\/p>\n

“diaspora, n.” “exile, n.1.” “refugee, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017.<\/p>\n

David Rossenwasser and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first began thinking about how my literary research interests could develop into potential topics for my senior thesis, I knew, broadly, that I wanted to focus on Latin American\/U.S. Latinx literature. My desire to pursue this led to coursework on U.S. Latina\/o Literature and further research on Latin American\/Latinx literary traditions. As I … Continue reading El Salvador: Of Homeland and Diaspora (?)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3612,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3612"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}