ABSTRACT
In 2001, my doctoral prospectus – submitted to the Department of English in the University of Cairo – was the only one on Chicana literature and the only one that attempted deploying postcolonial theories combined with feminist theories as the theoretical framework for my doctoral project. By the time my prospectus was approved by the Graduate School in the University of Cairo, two events unfolded that were closely related to my topic. The first was the return of another Egyptian scholar – Dr. Maher Mahdi, University of Helwan – who received his doctoral degree in Chicano poetry from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The second event was the American Embassy in Egypt hosting the renowned Chicana writer Ana Castillo as part of the cultural event of celebrating Hispanic history in the US that was taking place during the period of 15 September-15 October. It is the tradition of the American Embassy in Egypt to hold lectures, movie screenings, and forums that discuss different aspects of US history, address contemporary issues that the US and Egypt are involved in, and highlight the cultural diversity of the US. Thus, the purpose of inviting Castillo to Egypt was to shed more light on Hispanic literature. Since the American Embassy works closely with many universities in Egypt, these cultural events are valuable opportunities for scholars engaged with research that focuses on the US and its cultures. I would therefore say that in the year 2001, the academic interest in Chicano/a literature was emerging in Egypt, specifically in Cairo. By the year 2005, there was another doctoral prospectus that was submitted to the department of English in the University of Cairo on Latina literature and issues of “home” and belonging. Despite the passage of more than ten years, I still cannot claim that Chicano/a literature – or Latino/a literature in general – is widely known in Egypt, yet the interest in it is increasing as a new literary terrain to be explored by students in different departments of English in Egypt. In this essay I will discuss how and why I – a scholar from Egypt – became interested in examining Chicano/a literature or Latino/a literature and shed light on some of the studies conducted by scholars from the Arab world on Chicano/a literature. When I started gathering data for my doctoral project, I started with the key
searching terms “Latina literature,” not knowing then that I would end up focusing
on Chicana literature. I had many questions about this literature and its writers: who are they, where do their racial and ethnic roots belong, what language do they use in their literature, who are their canonical literary figures? Since I had not yet been to the US in 2001, it was very challenging to try these new literary fields in Egyptian academia. However, this lack of familiarity with Latino/a literature, at the time, also worked to my advantage and allowed me to get a very competitive honorary scholarship: the Fulbright fellowship. The subject was novel to the review committee and they were excited about it and fully supported me and my work. During my studying year at the University of Illinois, Chicago, as a visiting scholar (2003-4), I was asked how I became interested in Chicana literature almost every time I introduced myself, either in an academic or a social gathering. My answer to that question was a short story about my interest in “Third World feminism” and my reading of Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s chapter, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (in Mohanty et al 1991), in which she critiques how the notion of “sisterhood” in mainstream feminism does not demarcate differences among women or their various experiences of challenging patriarchy and oppression. Within the course of her chapter Mohanty gives the example of “Latina” writers and the collective “I” in their testimonials that problematizes the notion of women’s individualism that mainstream trends of feminism valorize as a central principle in feminist thinking. This was my starting point; I was intrigued by the sense of collectivism Mohanty
refers to in Latina feminist writings, which challenges cultural and social norms that oppress women. To me, that aspect in Latina writings echoes Egyptian women’s writings, especially writings in the 1950s and the 1960s when Egypt was undergoing major political and social changes after the 1952 revolution, when Egypt became a republic and toppled the Ottoman monarchy in Egypt. What I have found Egyptian women writers and Latina writers share is their devotion to national issues and crises their countries undergo, and their fighting to ensure that women’s rights are not overshadowed by national challenges and demands. The label “feminist” in Egypt implies being Westernized, which renders fighting for women’s rights and fighting for the nation antithetical. This tension is another similarity I have found that both Latina and Egyptian women writers share. In these regards, texts with a political twist that address issues of conquest and colonization, (such as Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) and The Last Generation by Cherríe Moraga (1993)), labor and class (So Far from God by Ana Castillo (1994c)), or wars and revolutions (Mother Tongue by Demetria Martinez (1994) and In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (1994)) stood out to me. I was moved reading Alvarez’s novel about Trujillo’s dictatorship and what it is like to be imprisoned for challenging his rule. Reading about Trujillo’s era in that novel was like reading about Nasser’s era, when the 1952 revolution turned into a nightmare for thinkers and activists who challenged his regime. Furthermore, trained as I am in a traditional English Department at the University of Cairo, what I studied was British literature, from Beowulf to the early twentieth century, and nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury American literature. Latina literature filled the literary gap I had between what I studied in college and read in English, and the Egyptian literature that I read in Arabic but whose content was different so I could not relate it to the literature
I was studying. Put differently, Latina texts I have read portray issues and causes that I am familiar with in my native country but in a language that I am academically engaged with. However, Latina writers’ use of Spanglish in many of their texts that I read was groundbreaking to me because it challenged the English literary tradition I was trained in during my years in college where all the literature I read was in English, and where we as students in the Department of English were taught to follow rules of standard English religiously. Although I was sometimes frustrated to read in Spanish, which I was not familiar with yet, I did not feel alienated from the texts that use Spanish words. On the contrary, reading Spanglish has made me realize that I am bilingual myself, familiar with both English and Arabic. However, when I write in English I write in English only, without any use of or reference to Arabic, my native tongue. In that sense, literature written in Spanglish dismantles the monolithism of the standard English I have always been forced to become fully acquainted with during my years in school and college. My first assessment of the term “Latina” literature was that it is by women writers
from Latin America. However, as I started gathering data for my doctoral project I also realized that Latina literature is sometimes used interchangeably with Hispanic literature, Chicana literature, and Caribbean literature. I believe that part of the reason why Latino/a literature was not widely known in 2001 in Egypt, despite its longer history in the US, is the complexity of defining Latino/a literature. Unlike African-American or Native American literatures that are defined to be either by writers of African descent or by writers whose descent goes back to the pre-conquest era in American history; and unlike other ethnic groups such as South AsianAmerican or Arab-American, where the writers are defined in terms of the geographical regions that their roots belong to, Latino/a literature is a wider term that cannot possibly be reduced to one racial heritage or one geographical locale. To clarify, though the term “Hispanic” is often used interchangeably with Latino/a, based on the fact that Latino/a writers share Spanish as their native tongue, it is also confused with writers who are from Spain rather than only writers from Latin America. By the same token, Chicano/a is not a geographical region in terms of which Chicano/a writers define themselves. As I continued gathering data for my doctoral project, I had to decide which
group of Latina writers I would focus on. What helped me to make the decision to narrow my project’s focus to Chicana literature was a number of interrelated factors. First, reading Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984), I immediately felt I could relate to the life of the main character, Esperanza. The girl, who steps into adulthood with dreams for herself and for her people, aspires for a role to play in society that is not prescribed to her by the traditions of her culture. Meanwhile, she is also proud of her cultural heritage. Esperanza’s life spoke to me at that time because it was the kind of feminist thinking that I was engaged with: being an assertive individualized woman without severing ties with where I come from. My first sense of identification with Esperanza’s life was intensified when I started reading Loving in the War Years/Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por Sus Labios by Cherríe Moraga (1983), who describes her role to attend to her brother and his visitors, serving them food and drinks. Though I have never played that role myself, I have seen my cousin getting up in the middle of a family gathering to prepare dinner for her brother.
