A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
The smell of an impossible dream: Dallas, migration, and creative failure in Angie Cruz's Let It Rain Coffee
Authors: Valovirta E, Kokkola L, Korkka J
Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
Publication year: 2014
Journal: Journal of Commonwealth Literature
Journal name in source: JOURNAL OF COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE
Journal acronym: J COMMONW LIT
Volume: 49
Issue: 2
First page : 229
Last page: 242
Number of pages: 14
ISSN: 0021-9894
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989414525616
Abstract
A Latin Caribbean (forced) migration experience is at the centre of Angie Cruz's 2005 novel, Let It Rain Coffee, which depicts the life and history of the Colon family in three different time periods (the early 1920s, the 1960s, and the 1990s) in the Dominican Republic as well as in New York City. This article focuses on the early 1990s immigrant experience of Esperanza Colon, whose addiction to the television show Dallas becomes illustrative of a cultural identity formed by the ideal of the American Dream and mass culture. Although Esperanza fails to live up to the impossible standards she has set herself, the novel's presentation of failure as a creative activity (as envisioned by Halberstam, 2011) challenges the hegemony of capitalism and globalization. Instead of reading the novel in terms of the two extremes of success or failure which typically characterize migrant narratives (Pearce, 2010), we focus on Esperanza's "middle ranges of agency" (Sedgwick, 2003: 13) to show how the commonplace terms in which migration is often presented fail to capture the nuances of immigrant experience at odds with the promise of the metropolis as negotiated by Cruz in the novel.
A Latin Caribbean (forced) migration experience is at the centre of Angie Cruz's 2005 novel, Let It Rain Coffee, which depicts the life and history of the Colon family in three different time periods (the early 1920s, the 1960s, and the 1990s) in the Dominican Republic as well as in New York City. This article focuses on the early 1990s immigrant experience of Esperanza Colon, whose addiction to the television show Dallas becomes illustrative of a cultural identity formed by the ideal of the American Dream and mass culture. Although Esperanza fails to live up to the impossible standards she has set herself, the novel's presentation of failure as a creative activity (as envisioned by Halberstam, 2011) challenges the hegemony of capitalism and globalization. Instead of reading the novel in terms of the two extremes of success or failure which typically characterize migrant narratives (Pearce, 2010), we focus on Esperanza's "middle ranges of agency" (Sedgwick, 2003: 13) to show how the commonplace terms in which migration is often presented fail to capture the nuances of immigrant experience at odds with the promise of the metropolis as negotiated by Cruz in the novel.
UTU Research Portal