Armonía con Una Palita de Conflicto: A Cuban and Puerto Rican Household as Bicultural

• In Event: Critical Narrative Methodologies as Sites for Challenging, Negotiating, and Reclaiming Bicultural Identities

Abstract

Academic literature on biculturalism has frequently focused on individuals navigating a majority societal culture distinct from a non-majority home culture (Ek & Sanchez, 2008; Montoya, 1994; Rodriguez, 2010; Sanchez, 2008). In this narrative study, the author focuses on a type of biculturalism in which individuals, namely the author’s Cuban mother and Puerto Rican father, navigate two distinct non-majority cultures to come together as a household. The study aims to explore the extent to which differences in Cuban and Puerto Rican practices are presented in contentious or harmonious ways in her parents’ narratives. Data for the study includes two interviews with the author’s mother, an interview with the author’s father, a combined interview with both the mother and father, and a preliminary interview with the author’s sister to corroborate background information.
The study’s theoretical framework is informed by Derrida’s theory of deconstruction as discussed by Jackson and Mazzei (2011), used to determine the absent-present traces the author’s parents associate with signifiers related to “Puerto Rican” or “Cuban” nationalities, and Butler’s (2008) theory of performativity, used to explore how the author’s mother enacts agency in ways that undo normative categories, which depreciate her decision to pursue a relationship with the author’s father. Two analytical methodologies with foci complimentary to the theoretical framework are employed: the dialogic analysis’s focus on the hidden voices in texts is consistent with Derrida’s concept of the trace in that both allow the researcher to “locate gaps and indeterminate sections in personal narrative” (Reissman, 2008, p. 107); the performance analysis’s focus on actors staging “performances of desirable selves to preserve ‘face’” (p. 106) is consistent with Butler’s portrayal of subjects employing agency when norms do not recognize them in favorable manners. Results demonstrate that although there are differences in the traces each partner associates with each nationality as well as differences in the practices of each cultural group, connections that associate some of the same traces with each nationality are made and similarities in practices are emphasized. As a result, the bicultural nature of the author’s family is more consistently presented in harmonious ways than it is in contentious ways.
This study’s scholarly significance is that it demonstrates that even when the interactions in question are between two non-majority groups (as compared to between a majority and non-majority group), the traces attached to signifiers and the norms employed by one non-majority group can function to exclude or include members of the other non-majority group. An implication, therefore, is that partners in bicultural relationships are in a unique position to represent the other culture to members of their own culture in positive and inclusive manners. Because they have intimate knowledge of the practices of the other culture, partners in bicultural relationships can accurately portray similarities between the two cultures as well as explain reasons behind differences. Since the initial sense of self happens in the family, the ways parents choose to respond to cultural difference can have an impact on the bicultural identities that children develop.

Author

• Martha Rosas, Teachers College, Columbia University