From rhizome to stolon subject: the representation of contemporary migrant characters in Julia Alvarez's Return to sender

Abstract

The Dominican American writer, Julia Alvarez, often portrays in her works immigrant subjects that experience biculturalism. In Return to Sender, Alvarez problematizes the issue that involves Mexican immigration in the United States. This dissertation investigates the emergence of a new Mexican immigrant subjectivityfrom this cultural encounter. With the advance of technologies, the contemporary world seems a space without boundaries and limits. Individuals connect with a multiplicity of places and cultures, establishing bonds, fostering business, and raising families. In other words, they promote what Gloria Anzaldúa calls cross-pollination (Borderlands 99), creating roots everywhere. This immigrant that establishes connections and has roots everywhere is recognized and represented in literary realm as a rhizomatic immigrant. This term is originated from biology and refers to species of underground stems commonly mistaken to roots due to the fact that both have similar function. Biology also presents another particular species of rhizomes that occurs above the ground known as stolons from which I borrow the term to name this contemporary immigrant subject that comes out from the darkness of anonymity and confinement, seeking for oxygenation, ventilated spaces, fluidity, and visibility. Under the light of this analogy, this work dialogues with biology in order to analyze the emergence and behavior of the Stolon immigrant in Julia Alvarezs narrative, as well as to investigate whether the representation of the characters writing in form of letters and diary, is an extension of her own Stolon subjectivity.