Abstract
Terms such as “globalization” and “World Literature” suggest that multilingualism rather than monolingualism is the sign of the present times. Celebratory discourse in Literary Studies seems to confirm this trend in Academia. In spite of the increased symbolic capital of the multilingual, real literary practices of authors with Latin American roots living outside Latin America only partially reflect this hybridity. “Soft multilingualism” is rather the norm. Analyzing examples of German literature, Yasemin Yildiz (Beyond the Mother Tongue) identifies this contradiction between multilingual realities in society and the persistence of the monolingual paradigm in literature as “the postmonolingual condition”. In my article, in which I present an ongoing research project, I will focus on four contemporary intercultural autobiographies where language choices are explicitly connected to questions of identity. By doing so, I intend to shed light on the paradoxical strategies through which bilingual authors (English and Spanish) in the U.S. shape their struggle towards the postmonolingual paradigm.
Key Words
Multilingualism; Autobiography; Latino Studies; U.S. Latino Writers