Procesos de neoculturaciön en la autobiografia y la memoria femenina hispana en los estados unidos

The present article studies the specific literary patterns followed by different Hispanic women writers in their attempt to recover the past of their communities. In the light of Angel Rama's theories on process of cuhuracion and the effects of neocolonialism in Latin American literature, I determine parallelisms between the works of New Mexican women writers of the 30's, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert, Cleofas Jaramillo and Nina Otero-Warren, and contemporary Texan and Puerto Rican authors, particularly, in Gloria Anzaldua's text Borderlands/La fronlera and in Esmeralda Santiago When I Was Puerto Rican and I come to the conclusion that the similar literary development between women writers of different historic, social and geographic background needs to be explained not only as a response to the imperialism forced upon Hispanic communities in the United States but as the consequence of the double patriarchal system experienced by these writers. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.