Healing Memories: Puerto Rican Women's Literature in the United States (Latinx and Latin American Profiles)

Using an interdisciplinary approach, __Healing Memories__ analyzes the ways that Puerto Rican women authors use their literary works to challenge historical methodologies that have silenced the historical experiences of Puerto Rican women in the United States. Following Aurora Levins Morales's alternative historical methodology she calls “curandera history,” this work analyzes the literary work of authors, including Aurora Levins Morales, Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, and the ways they create medicinal histories that not only document the experiences of migrant women but also heal the trauma of their erasure from mainstream national history. Each analytical chapter focuses on the various methods used by each author including using the literary space as an archive, reclaiming memory, and (re)writing cultural history, all through a feminist lens that centers the voices and experiences of Puerto Rican women. "Using an interdisciplinary approach, Healing Memories analyzes the ways that Puerto Rican women authors use their literary works to challenge historical methodologies that have silenced the historical experiences of Puerto Rican women in the United States. Following Aurora Levins Morales's alternative historical methodology she calls 'curandera history,' this work analyzes the literary work of authors, including Aurora Levins Morales, Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, and the ways they create medicinal histories that not only document the experiences of migrant women but also heal the trauma of their erasure from mainstream national history. Each analytical chapter focuses on the various methods used by each author including using the literary space as an archive, reclaiming memory, and (re)writing cultural history, all through a feminist lens that centers the voices and experiences of Puerto Rican women"-- Provided by publisher Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction. "La Cultural Cura": Healing Historical Absences 16 Chapter 1. The Making of a Curandera Historian: Aurora Levins Morales 36 Chapter 2. Double Victory for Puerto Rican Women Too: Nicholasa Mohr's Nilda 64 Chapter 3. "Mending Broken Memories": Judith Ortiz Cofer's Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood 88 Chapter 4. "Degrees of Puertoricanness": Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican 120 Conclusion. Who Tells Your Story? Situating DiaspoRican Women's Literature 152 Notes 168 Works Cited 172 Index 186 How literature challenges the historical methodologies that have silenced the American experience of Puerto Rican women.