Esbozar un yo americano. Autoayuda y la narración en segunda persona en A Beginner’s Guide to America (2021) de Roya Hakakian

• Autores: Parisa Delshad
• Localización: Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I, ISSN 1697-7750, Nº. 37, 2025, págs. 45-59
• Idioma: español
• DOI: 10.6035/clr.8111
• Títulos paralelos:
  • How to Chisel an American Self: The Second-Person Narrative and Self-Help in Roya Hakakian’s A Beginner’s Guide to America(2021)
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Este artículo ofrece el primer análisis crítico en inglés de A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious (2021) de Roya Hakakian, dirigido a un migrante genérico recién llegado a Estados Unidos. Escrito en el estilo narrativo en segunda persona típico de las guías de autoayuda, el libro de Hakakian sirve como una narrativa personal que guía al lector a través del viaje para convertirse en estadounidense. Haciéndose eco de la idea del excepcionalismo estadounidense, relata una historia de progreso histórico entretejida a través de anécdotas de violencia e injusticia contra comunidades marginadas a lo largo de la historia estadounidense; el narrador representa estos episodios como hitos esenciales hacia la libertad. El narrador le enseña a la narrataria que las luchas por la libertad a lo largo de la historia de Estados Unidos fueron esfuerzos por someterse al estado de derecho y a la Constitución. Luego se invita a la narrataria a esperar estoicamente y con resignación hasta su ceremonia de naturalización, cuando sus libertades estarán protegidas por la constitución. Al rastrear los vínculos intertextuales de la historia y explorar sus aspectos formales, este artículo sostiene que el surgimiento del sujeto libre al final de la historia refleja la ideología dominante de asimilación y conformidad con la sociedad estadounidense.

  • English

    This article offers the first critical reading in English of Roya Hakakian’s A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious(2021), which is addressed to a generic migrant, newly arrived in America. Written in the second-person narrative style typical of self-help guides, Hakakian’s book serves as a guide for the reader through her journey of becoming an American. Echoing the idea of American exceptionalism, it recounts a tale of historical progress woven through anecdotes of violence and injustice against marginalized communities throughout American history and represents these episodes as essential milestones toward freedom. The narrator teaches the unknowing migrant addressee that struggles for freedom throughout American history were endeavors to submit to the rule of law and the Constitution. The narratee is then invited to stoically and resignedly wait until her naturalization ceremony when her liberties will be protected by the Constitution. Tracing the story’s intertextual links and exploring its formal aspects, this paper argues that the emergence of the free subject at the story’s conclusion reflects the dominant ideology of assimilation and conformity to American society

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