This is a clear political message canyar the mainstream assimilationist tendencies that Prida artfully manages to convey through this play which is a representation of the personal experience of any U. As the playwright warns us, the “play must never be represented in one language” 49 because its main point is, precisely, to show the simultaneous presence of both cultures without the superiority of one above the other, that is, hybridity. Thus, with this game a new bicultural and bilingual fluency very familiar for people in similar situations is created.
Therefore, “it is evident from this description that both characters function as ethnic stereotypes” Sandoval The presence of two different cultures within the same person gives way to the abundance of cultural dichotomies in the text which function as a “polarizing comic device” Weiss Clearly enough the first part of the dichotomy corresponds to “She” and the second to “Ella.Īs has been proved, the text moves as if it were a ping-pong ball jumping from one part of the stage to another constantly switching language and culture with its corresponding polarizing effect rolores creates hybridity. The objects they own the props have been thoughtfully introduced by the playwright so as to function as evident dilores of their cultures.
They are the cultural sides of a personality: The play begins with the apartment in which “Ella” and “She” live divided into “two ethnic territories, one for each character” Sandoval that represent the two different cultural parts of the consciousness of any bicultural and therefore, hybrid Latina. Coser y cantar – Dolores Prida – Google Books
The subtitle of Coser y Cantar, “a One Act Bilingual Fantasy for Two Women”, already hints at its content since the play can be considered as Prida’s fantasy of what would be a possible theatrical representation of being a bicultural and bilingual woman, which is corroborated by Prida herself when asserting that “ deals with how to be a bilingual and bicultural woman in Manhattan and keep your sanity” “The Show Does Go on” Therefore, she will explore the inner struggle within women caught between two cultures at the same time as she will try with her work to look for an emotional equilibrium between one culture and the other, and accordingly, perfectly reflecting the dual personality hence, the hybridity of a female Cuban exile belonging to the one-and-a-half generation 1.Ĭoser y Cantar is really one long bilingual monologue between a Latina named “Ella” and her Anglo inner self “She”, who are two halves of the same person. Prida deals with such topics creating a play whose content and structure does not resemble any previous works by Cuban-Americans.Ĭoser y Cantaras Prida herself states, is “about the experience of being Hispanic in the United States, about people trying to reconcile two cultures and two languages and two visions of the world into a particular whole In this work, Prida brings the personal experience to a political dimension so as to denounce and criticize the assimilationist tendencies imposed by the mainstream that aim at homogenizing American society according to Anglo-American values. Together with that, this paper will also analyze how Prida aims with these plays at the denouncement and criticism of assimilationist tendencies imposed by the mainstream and accordingly, vindicates the duality of the Latino bilingual and bicultural being, clearly revealing her anti-assimilationist message. Latinos live cantarr it with high doses of humour, popular culture, criticism and even sarcasm and thus, successfully capturing in theatrical form that unique and complex reality of a culturally hybrid Latina living on the hyphen. Language and Identity in Three Plays by Dolores Prida Prida belongs to a new generation of Latino women writing in North America: More precisely, Prida belongs to the first generation of Cuban-Americans who left the island with the cabtar of having left everything behind home, family belongings, In Coser y Orida one of her most acclaimed playsPrida wittily brings to the stage the biculturalism and subsequently, bilingualism in which millions of U. Interested.ĭolores Prida is ranked among the most important playwrights of contemporary Latino theatre in the United States.
Four Different Latino Playwrights, Full Casts Of Local Latino Actors Our Stories Shared With.