Bethany A. Dolman and Dr. Trenton L. Hickman, English
Transnationalism is sociology’s relatively new model of national identity that explains and validates a phenomenon that most immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States experience: a simultaneous sense of connection to multiple countries, cultures and national identities. I examined Dominican American transnationalism from an interdisciplinary perspective, fusing sociological and literary theory by using Julia Alvarez’s novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents as a case study for the transnational Dominican American experience. I set out to analyze a very abstract and dynamic concept, somewhat unsure during the project’s early stages of how I was going to delimit such a broad theoretical notion but finishing more than a year later with a detailed 79 page Honors Thesis.
I expanded the definition of transnationalism beyond the idea of an immigrant merely maintaining simultaneous ties to more than one national identity. As a young immigrant myself I recognized that while there were moments I felt connected to both countries, there were also others I didn’t feel a part of either. I tried to capture its dynamic nature by defining transnationalism as figurative movement between the multiple identities. By rejecting the concept of a static hybridity and re-defining transnational identity as a constant symbolic journey between the various facets of two or more national identities I articulate what is behind many immigrants’ sense of simultaneous connection to and isolation from two homelands.
During the course of my research and writing I found that my textual analysis of this definition lacked substance. I spent several months wondering which direction to take the project and reread Alvarez’s novel several times searching for stronger support for my argument. I realized that the novel’s anecdotes and imagery constantly returned to two major themes: voice and movement, what later became the two principle elements of my expanded definition. I discovered that language provides a way for the novel’s immigrants to analyze their oscillation between cultures, articulate their perpetual movement and shed pre-formulated conceptions of national identity to freely define themselves and their new symbolic “home.” Transnationalism is an immigrant’s constant movement between multiple national identities, and the voice used to articulate that movement creates a text that becomes the new portable homeland implied by transnational theory. Upon return from a semester abroad in the Dominican Republic and a trip to New York City, I began re-writing the thesis with fresh ideas for the textual analysis portion of the project—the chapters that serve as foundational support for my re-definition of transnational identity.
Just as my project was originally inspired by personal experience, it also affects me in a very personal way. I am currently in my first year of teaching the Spanish component of a dual language third grade class in South Texas, just minutes from the U.S. – Mexican border, where I work daily with children who live between two languages, countries, and cultures. As my conclusions imply, all children—especially immigrants growing up in a very transnational part of the United States—need to discover and articulate their voices. This empowers them with the mobility necessary to explore and define their complex reality and find a space, be it physical or symbolic, they can call home. This understanding has helped me formulate a teaching philosophy that will guide a career dedicated to serving bilingual transnational youth.