On Diasporas’ Cultural Identity Modes In The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love

Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013), the most-noticed contemporary Cuban American writer,published in1989his representative work The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which wasthe first Pulitzer-awarded Hispanic literary work. The novel mainly depicts the New Yorkmambo boom in1940s and50s, and meanwhile it also reveals diaspora’s living predicamentas well as the issue of cultural identity that they confront in the United States.From the perspective of diaspora criticism especially based on Stuart Hall’s theory aboutdiaspora and cultural identity, this thesis focuses on the three different cultural identity modesrespectively adopted by the Castillo brothers and Arnaz, thus illustrating the enormoussignificance of a hybrid cultural identity to diasporas living in multicultural society, andproviding other ethnic group diasporas with a feasible solution to their problematic culturalidentity.This thesis probes into the three cultural identity modes of Cesar, Nestor and Arnaz,namely, the Americanized cultural identity, the Cuban cultural identity and the hybrid culturalidentity, respectively. The first chapter elaborates that Cesar constructs his Americanizedcultural identity via learning English, and accepting American values typified byconsumerism and individualism. It is the blindly Americanized cultural identity that urgesCesar’s assimilation by American Consciousness and discard of his original culture, givingrise to his cultural identity crisis in the end. The second chapter analyzes Nestor’s Cubancultural identity mode. Confronting racial discrimination and cultural conflict in the hostcountry, Nestor chooses to stick to his original culture, and cultivates his uprooted culturalroots in Cuban music, Cuban food and Cuban memory. This part also reveals that Nestor’sCuban cultural identity is the underlying cause of his marginalization by and incompatibilitywith the American society. The third chapter illustrates Arnaz’s fluid roles, the coexistence ofAmerican culture and Cuban culture in his cultural identity and his negotiating the conflictsand difference between the two cultures, thus revealing that it is the hybrid cultural identitythat allows Arnaz to integrate into the American mainstream society without fading away hisCuban traits. At the end of the novel, Nestor’s son Eugenio, through reflecting the threecultural identity modes employed by the elder generation, internalizes the essence of hybridcultural identity. In the epilogue, the scene that the Castillo brother’s hearts join together andfloat away symbolizes the ultimate blending of the two cultures into a hybrid cultural identity,in this way, the theme of the novel is sublimited. Based on the exploration of Cuban diasporas’ cultural identity in The Mambo KingsPlay Songs of Love, the present thesis contends what Hijuelos advocates is a fluid and hybridcultural identity, which is of tremendous significance to Cuban diasporas’ negotiationbetween American culture and Cuban culture. The issue of cultural identity Castillo brothersare confronted with is of particular typification, in this light, it engenders enlightment on thecultural identity construction of diasporas of both Cuban and other ethnic groups.