SOURCE: Szadziuk, Maria. “Culture as Transition: Becoming a Woman in Bi-Ethnic Space.” Mosaic 32, no. 3 (September 1999): 109-29.

In the following essay, Szadziuk examines the autobiographical novels of three women writers: The House on Mango Street, by Cisneros, When I Was Puerto Rican, by Esmeralda Santiago, and Loving in the War Years, by Cherríe Moraga. Szadziuk asserts that all three novels explore the concept of culture-in-transition through the metaphor of culture-as-travel.

Issues created by post-national, multicultural societies involve not only questions about peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups but also the variety of cultural influences to which members of these societies are exposed. What this means, in turn, is that culture can no longer be regarded as a static entity but must be viewed instead as something dynamic—“travelling cultures,” as James Clifford titles one of his discussions of the topic. In the case of North American societies, this...