Islands in transit: The trans-Puerto Rican community in the narrative work of Manuel Ramos Otero.

Abstract

The dissertation is a study of the narrative works of gay Puerto Rican author, Manuel Ramos Otero (1948--1990). It explores Ramos Otero's use of autobiography as a two-fold strategy that questions reality and fiction as well as the notions of objectivity and subjectivity. I propose that Ramos Otero writes against both the literary canon and other totalizing colonial discourses while simultaneously writing in favor of a different theory of literature and subjectivity in order to conjure an alternate community through the displacement and repetition of the place of origin, transforming it into the Trans-Puerto Rican community. I explore each anthology as a performative gesture, that together form a triptych of gestures which represent not only circular migration, but also a reconciliation with both the place of origin, Puerto Rico, and the place of (s)exile, New York. In Chapter I, I contextualize the author's work in historical terms within the framework of Puerto Rico's colonial situation and the circumstances that drove him to (s)exile. I examine the literary traditions that his work dialogues with or against and the implications of his trans-cultural, transnational positioning. In Chapter II, I consider Ramos Otero's first anthology, <italic> Concierto de metal para un recuerdo</italic> (1971), as the gesture of <italic> eviction</italic>. Ramos Otero sketches the beginning of an alternate community through a theory of the colonial subject. In Chapter III, I propose <italic> El cuento de la mujer del mar</italic> (1979) as the <italic>Duel</italic>. The battle is against notions of fixed sexual identity and gender, through the transvestite margin that <italic>queers</italic> subjectivity into a simultaneous space of marginalization and empowerment. Ramos Otero conjures community through alliances with subaltern subjects. In Chapter IV, I examine <italic>Pagina en blanco y staccato</italic> (1987), as <italic> reconciliation</italic>. Here Ramos Otero conjures a Trans-Puerto Rican community through a historiography that combines fiction and history-biography-autobiography. In Chapter V, I conclude the study with an exploration of community and autobiography in other Caribbean authors, such as Patricia Powell, and Reinaldo Arenas.