Space, Emotion, and Gender
Mapping Transcultural Identity in Kym Ragusa’s "The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.5535Keywords:
memoir, transculturality, space, gender, emotionAbstract
This article examines Kym Ragusa’s The Skin between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging as a gendered transcultural narrative from the standpoint of spatial theory. In order to do so, it contextualizes the text within the framework of memoir writing and subsequently analyzes the representation of varied emotional spaces in the process of recovering one’s identity as displayed by the narrative voice. This research contends that the use of memoir, a genre particularly used by ‘marginal’ voices, is an adequate means to critically reflect on the (de)construction of identity as well as convey alternative patterns of gender relations and cultural negotiations. In addition, it stresses the central role of space and emotions in reflecting the transculturality and intersectionality of the diasporic and gendered subject.
Downloads
References
Ahmed, S. 2000. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge.
Allan, G. and G. Crow. 1989. Introduction. In Home and Family: Creating the Relationships. London: MacMillan.
Ardizzone, P. 2003. “La ricerca dell’identità linguistica e culturale nella letteratura femminile italo-americana”. Rasegna Siciliana di Storia e Cultura 19. http://www.isspe.it/rassegna-siciliana/45-numeri-rassegna-siciliana/rassegna-siciliana-di-storia-e-cultura-n-19.html [Accessed online on July 20, 2022]
Bacchilega, C. 2013. Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder. Detroit: Wayne State UP.
Baena, R, ed. 2013. Transculturing Auto/biography: Forms of Life Writing. London: Routledge.
Bona, M. J. 1999. Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP.
Bond, L. and J. Rapson, eds. 2014. The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory between and Beyond Borders. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Bonifazi, C. and F. Heins. 2000. “Long-Term Trends of Internal Migration in Italy”. International Journal of Population Geography 6 (2): 111-131.
Brockmeier, J. 2015. Beyond the Archive: Memory, Narrative, and the Autobiographical Process. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Carrera Suárez, I. 2015. “The Stranger Flâneuse and the Aesthetics of Pedestrianism: Writing the Post-Diasporic Metropolis”. Interventions 17 (6): 853-865.
Collie, N. 2013. “Walking in the City: Urban Space, Stories, and Gender.” Gender Forum 42: 3-15.
Dagnino, A. 2012. "Transcultural Writers and Transcultural Literature in the Age of Global Modernity". Transnational Literature 4 (2): np.
De Lucía, F. 2009. “The Hybrid Identity of an American Woman: Ethnicity and Gender in Kym Ragusa’s The Skin Between us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and
Belonging.” Writing American Women: Text, Gender, Performance. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 13: 195-204.
De Rogatis, T. 2010. “The Skin between Us di Kym Ragusa. Pregiudizio razziale, mito classico e identità femminile”. Il Mulino: 298-311.
DeSalvo, L. 2003. “Color: White / Complexion: Dark”. Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America. Eds. J. Guglielmo and S. Salerno. New York: Routledge. 17-29.
Duncan, J. S. and G. Duncan. 2004. “Culture Unbound”. Environment and Planning: Economy and Space 36 (3): 391-403.
Fanon, F. 1986. Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press. Trans. C. L. Markmann.
Ferraro, E. 2010. “Moving Thresholds: Liminal Writing in the Italian Diaspora. Rhode Island: PhD diss.
Fiore, T. 2017. Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy's Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies, Critical Studies in Italian America. New York: Fordham University Press.
Gabaccia, D. 2000. Italy’s Many Diasporas. London: Taylor and Francis.
Gilsenan Nordin, I., Hansen, J. and C. Zamorano-Llena, eds. 2013. Transcultural Identities in Contemporary Literature. Amsterdan: Rodopi.
Giunta, E. 2017. “Il memoir come pratica interculturale negli studi italoamericani” Rilessi di un’America italiana. Studi sulla cultura italoamericana negli Stati Uniti. Ácoma 13: 151-172.
Grosz, E. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indiana UP.
Guglielmo, T. 2003a. “No Color Barrier: Italians, Race, and Power in the United States”. Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America. Eds. J. Guglielmo and S. Salerno. New York: Routledge. 29-44.
Guglielmo, T. 2003b. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945. London: Routledge.
Gupta, A. and J. Ferguson. 1992. “Beyond ‘Culture:’ Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference”. Cultural Anthropology 7 (2): 6-23.
Haase, D. 2004. Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches. Wayne State UP.
Hall, S. 1995. “New Cultures for Old”. A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization. Eds. D. B. Massey and P. M. Jess. Oxford: Oxford UP. 175-215.
Hayden, D. 1980. “What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work”. Signs 5 (3): S170-S187.
Irigaray, L. 1993 (1987). Sexes and Genealogies. New York: Columbia UP. Trans. C. G. Gillian.
Kristeva, J., A. Jardine and H. Blake. 1981. “Women's time”. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7 (1): 13-35.
Laurino, M. 2015. The Italian Americans: A History. New York: Norton.
Mazzucchelli, C. 2015. The Heart and the Island: A Critical Study of Sicilian American Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Massey, D. 1995. “The Conceptualization of Place”. A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization. Ed. D. Massey and P. Jess. Oxford: Oxford UP. 45-87.
McDowell, L. 1983. “Towards an Understanding of the Gender Division of Urban Space”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1: 59-72.
McDowell, L. 1999. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Minneapolis: Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.
Morrison, T. 1999 (1970). The Bluest Eye. London: Vintage.
Nelson, P. E. 2008. “Rewriting Myth: New Interpretations of La Malinche, La Llorona, and La Virgen de Guadalupe in Chicana Feminist Literature”. Bachelor of Arts Thesis, The College of William and Mary.
Pain, R. 2001. “Gender, Race, Age and Fear in the City”. Urban Studies 38 (5–6): 899–913.
Parati, G. and A. Tamburri, eds. 2015. The Cultures of Italian Migration: Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson.
Pelayo Sañudo, E. 2021. “Unexplored Spaces for Unconventional Paces: Mapping the Colonial and the Body through Aritha van Herk’s Work”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 62 (5): 564-573.
Pratt, A. 1994. “Demeter, Persephone, and the Pedagogy of Archetypal Empowerment”. The Long Journey Home: Re-Visioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for our Time. Ed. C. Downing. Boston: Shambala. 146-154.
Seffer, V. 2015. Identity on the Threshold: The Myth of Persephone in Italian American Women's Memoirs. PhD Thesis. The University of Sydney.
Showalter, E. 1977. A Literature of Their Own. British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Sibley, D. 2002 (1995). Geographies of Exclusion: Society and difference in the West. London and New York: Routledge.
Sidonie S. and J. Watson, eds. 2001. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Storey, D. 2001. Territory: The Claiming of Space. Essex: Pearson.
Tomasulo, V. 2021. “Persophone’s Descent: Place, Race and Diasporic Self-Fashioning in The Skin Between Us”. jamit! 4: 83-106.
Tonkiss, F. 2005. Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms. Massachusetts: Polity.
Valentine, G. 1989. “The Geography of Women’s Fear”. Area 21 (4): 385-390.
Walker, A. 1984. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. London: The Woman’s Press.
Watson, S. 1986. “Women and housing or feminist housing analysis?”. Housing Studies 1 (1): 1-10.
Williams, L. (1992) 2012. “Happy Families? Feminist Reproduction and Matrilineal Thought”. New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts. Ed. I. Armstrong. London: Routledge. 48-65.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Eva Pelayo Sañudo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors retain copyright of articles and authorize Journal of English Studies the first publication. They are free to share, redistribute, and/or reprint the article without obtaining permission from the publisher as long as they give appropriate credit to the editor and the journal.
Self-archiving is allowed too. In fact, it is recommendable to deposit a PDF version of the paper in academic and/or institutional repositories.
It is recommended to include the DOI number.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
