Autoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 13 (2011) Issue 4 Article 11 Autoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban Samantha L. McAuliffe University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Recommended Citation McAuliffe, Samantha L. "Autoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4 (2011): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1874> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 4514 times as of 11/ 07/19. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu> CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb> Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Volume 13 Issue 4 (December 2011) Article 11 Samantha L. McAuliffe "Autoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss4/11> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4 (2011) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss4/> Abstract: In her article "Authoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban" Samantha L. McAuliffe positions Cristina Garcia's novel as a text of self-discovery and cultural reconciliation. McAuliffe examines multilingualism and hybridity in Dreaming in Cuban and postulates that the novel represents what Marie Louise Pratt calls the "contact zone" where cultures meet and clash. As autoethnography, Dreaming in Cuban allows an insider view of what being Cuban American really means. The reader is able to experience the conflict those with a hybrid identity experience through the eyes of one in the midst of that conflict. Further, McAuliffe suggests in her analysis that there is evidence that Garcia herself is able to reconcile issues of culture and identity through the writing of the novel. Samantha L. McAuliffe, "Autoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4 (2011): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss4/11> Samantha L. McAULIFFE Autoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban Autoethnography is fascinating because it affords the reader a unique window into the lives of those members of society considered to be outside of the main stream. By definition, autoethnography is writing that is undertaken by the other to confront perceptions created through representations that the majority has made of them. It is a type of writing that tells the story from the point of view of those who experienced it. In "Arts of the Contact Zone," Mary Louise Pratt positions autoethnography as a practice of the "contact zone." She describes contact zones as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths" (34). The clashing and mixing of cultures create the conditions for an autoethnographic text to be produced. Pratt's theory of autoethnography as a literary form is a relatively new theory. However, autoethnography itself has existed for hundreds of years. Previously, autoethnography has been viewed mostly as a sociological methodology. Based on the condition that autoethnography is a cultural study, it is easy to see why it has operated as an extension of the sociological research method, ethnography. Unlike autoethnography, literary ethonographies are texts written to rationalize or justify the colonization and oppression of others. A sociological theory of ethnography is a method of studying a culture other than one's own by immersing oneself within that culture and writing about what one discovers throughout that process. Mary Reda explains that autoethnography has grown out of the ethnographic research methodology but, in literary terms, autoethnography and ethnography are very different. A researcher hoping to write an ethnography must study "the history, participants, and language of a community" in order to understand the cultural group (178). Reda cites Beverly Moss, who warns that there are problems within an ethnographic project. Moss warns against "ethnocentrism and other baggage" acknowledging the limited role of the researc (...truncated)