Memoir as Performance: Strategies of Hybrid Ethnic Identity

Abstract

This close textual analysis of three memoirs written by Latina/o-white hybrid individuals discusses ways they resist the limitations of current discourses of race and ethnicity. First I examine hybridity and ethnic performativity. Then I explain how the writing and reading of memoir is performance. Next I talk of three trappings of identity as experienced by the authors. Finally, I demonstrate how the authors resist these trappings through the continuum of strategies offered by their hybrid identities. In the end, the analysis offers equipment for living within the Latina/o-white hybrid identity but also, possibly and hopefully, within all contemporary cultural identities.

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