We are not just Patriots of a Country, but Citizens of the Planet’: Children’s Identity Negotiations in Julia Alvarez’s Return to Sender

Abstract

According to Manuel Castells, the present global era is characterized by a dialectical tension between a globalist imagination of unbounded space (“space of flows”) and an essentialist conception of space as ruptured and divided into bounded entities (“space of places”). These conflicting tendencies are depicted in Julia Alvarez’s Return to Sender(2009), which is told from the dual perspectives of a Mexican immigrant girl and an American boy who struggle for self-definition in a global context. The present paper aims at analyzing how both children navigate through this paradox, focusing on their dilemmas of identity and belonging and the strategies devised to overcome them.