history in Hispaniola and beyond.
Yunoir’s rewriting of history is accomplished in several ways. One notable way is through the format of the book, which uses footnotes in order to add histories of the Dominican Republic, a fantasy character, Trujillo, etc. This format at first could signal an academic text “in which there is a separation between the content and the historical data that inform it,” but the footnotes in this novel instead provide an insight into the Dominican History that non-Hispanic readers may not have access to. Yunoir, and Díaz by extent, create a collapse “between [the] historiographical and fictional registers by inextricably blending the two” (Mahler 120). The footnotes are not written in the normal disjointed way …show more content…
Instead, he chooses to rely on rumors, myths, and word of mouth. These stories, when the state is corrupted by these colonial, dictatorial powers are more reliable then the actual histories created by the state. The role of the state in rewriting the actual histories of the country with the histories that they create for that state is diminished as Yunoir relies more so on the rumor and the fictional story. Yunoir in this way focuses on the supernatural. Unlike the footnotes which explain the Dominican histories to non-hispanic readers, the book uses countless references to science fiction, fantasy, and superhero genres in order to frame our minds around the supernatural effects of the fuku. In the first mention of Trujillo, Yunoir introduces the supervillain of the story as “our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator, a personaje so outlandish, so perverse that not even a sci-fi writer could have made his ass up” (Díaz 2). These references, which presumably, most western readers would be familiar with, help to frame the understanding of Trujillo as a supervillain, the fukú’s role in Hispanoilia in the mid-1900’s. They also are a perfect example of how Yunoir collapses history with …show more content…
In addition to the aforementioned role of objectifying the women of the narrative, Yunoir renames Oscar and rewrites his story from his perspective, especially in the way he construes Oscar as other because of his weight and interests. Though there are multiple narrative threads that run throughout the novel, there is really only one narrator, Yunoir, “causing a false sense of multiple perspectives and voices that appear” throughout the novel as “he, not [the Cabral family], narrates, shapes and constructs into a text their lives” (Sepulveda 27). Yunoir colonizes the story of the Cabral clan as uses it for his own means, at times writing a counter-narrative that challenges, but at times writing a narrative that reinforces the status
Yunoir’s rewriting of history is accomplished in several ways. One notable way is through the format of the book, which uses footnotes in order to add histories of the Dominican Republic, a fantasy character, Trujillo, etc. This format at first could signal an academic text “in which there is a separation between the content and the historical data that inform it,” but the footnotes in this novel instead provide an insight into the Dominican History that non-Hispanic readers may not have access to. Yunoir, and Díaz by extent, create a collapse “between [the] historiographical and fictional registers by inextricably blending the two” (Mahler 120). The footnotes are not written in the normal disjointed way …show more content…
Instead, he chooses to rely on rumors, myths, and word of mouth. These stories, when the state is corrupted by these colonial, dictatorial powers are more reliable then the actual histories created by the state. The role of the state in rewriting the actual histories of the country with the histories that they create for that state is diminished as Yunoir relies more so on the rumor and the fictional story. Yunoir in this way focuses on the supernatural. Unlike the footnotes which explain the Dominican histories to non-hispanic readers, the book uses countless references to science fiction, fantasy, and superhero genres in order to frame our minds around the supernatural effects of the fuku. In the first mention of Trujillo, Yunoir introduces the supervillain of the story as “our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator, a personaje so outlandish, so perverse that not even a sci-fi writer could have made his ass up” (Díaz 2). These references, which presumably, most western readers would be familiar with, help to frame the understanding of Trujillo as a supervillain, the fukú’s role in Hispanoilia in the mid-1900’s. They also are a perfect example of how Yunoir collapses history with …show more content…
In addition to the aforementioned role of objectifying the women of the narrative, Yunoir renames Oscar and rewrites his story from his perspective, especially in the way he construes Oscar as other because of his weight and interests. Though there are multiple narrative threads that run throughout the novel, there is really only one narrator, Yunoir, “causing a false sense of multiple perspectives and voices that appear” throughout the novel as “he, not [the Cabral family], narrates, shapes and constructs into a text their lives” (Sepulveda 27). Yunoir colonizes the story of the Cabral clan as uses it for his own means, at times writing a counter-narrative that challenges, but at times writing a narrative that reinforces the status