Research Supervisor: Brian Luna Lucero 

Project Background: 

My research aims to understand how immigrants experience cultural borders and assimilation through an analysis of performance in the play Dominicanish, written and performed by Josefina Báez. Dominicanish is a one-person play accompanied by the sound of the trumpet, in which Báez explores migration and the process of assimilation. The play ran for ten years (1999–2010) and was translated into seven languages, reaching an international audience. Josefina Báez (1960–) is a Dominican American poet, storyteller, and performance artist whose work examines the linguistic and cultural negotiations experienced by immigrants in the United States. Throughout her career, she has reimagined borders as more than just physical barriers, a theme explored in Dominicanish. Her understanding of borders as transcending materiality stems from her philosophy of El ni’e, a Dominican slang term that can be translated as “neither here nor there” or “blurred borders.” In an interview discussing El ni’e, Báez describes it as “border as a place, a meaning. Border as a place of being. More than limiting me, it is that space of creation.” It is precisely this embodied exploration of the border as a place of being that I aim to examine by analyzing Báez’s performance in Dominicanish. Through this analysis, I seek to understand how borders can function as spaces of creation rather than as sites of limitation and cultural ambiguity.

Research Question: 

• How are cultural and linguistic differences negotiated by the Dominican diaspora? 
• How can cultural and linguistic differences function as sites of creation and cultural fluidity? 

Method: 

Dominicanish imagines borders as spaces of being, prompting us to examine how embodiment is used as a tool to convey that message. While the play is rich in its use of Spanglish, code-switching, and a non-linear narrative structure, as most of the scholarly work has noted. However, scholars have neglected the ways these techniques are translated into the performance is essential to understanding the embodiment of cultural borders and assimilation. For instance, Báez chose to present her work as a play rather than as a collection of poems or a novel, making the performative aspects of the text crucial to its interpretation. Examining the text alone offers one layer of meaning, but analyzing its embodiment in performance provides a more nuanced interpretation.

To explore the performance, I will analyze Dominicanish through three performative elements: embodiment (how Báez uses her body to convey meaning, emotion, and identity), vocal delivery (how she employs intonation and rhythm to create meaning), and staging (how she utilizes space to shape the interpretation of her work). Through this analysis, I aim to trace how Báez negotiates cultural hybridity and linguistic fluidity as defining aspects of the immigrant experience of borders through performance.

To conduct my research, I will utilize Columbia’s Latino Arts and Activism Archive to access Báez’s manuscripts, performance recordings, and unpublished materials housed in the collection. The archive will be a valuable resource, as it contains art portfolios that served as Báez’s scrapbook, documenting her creative process in developing Dominicanish as a staged performance. Additionally, I hope to have the opportunity to meet and interview Báez, as she is based in New York City.

Objective: 

The immigrant community in the United States faces blatant threats to its livelihood and cultural identity. With birthright citizenship under attack, the identity of the second generation of the immigrants born in American soil is increasingly questioned. My analysis of Dominicanish seeks to illuminate how immigrants experience cultural borders and assimilation. In doing so, I hope to offer insights into how immigrants who call the U.S. home can reimagine borders as spaces of being rather than barriers to belonging.