Beyond resistance in Dominican American women’s fiction: Healing and growth through the spectrum of quietude in Angie Cruz’s Soledad and Naima Coster’s Halsey Street

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The Dominican Republic and its relationship with Dominican America have often been studied in relation to the brutal regime of Rafael Trujillo, tiguere masculinity, and the political sphere. Writers like Julia Alvarez and Junot Diaz, as well as anthologies of Dominican women’s writing, form a literary archive that conceives of women’s writing as a perpetual act of rebellion, mostly against Trujillo and Trujillista models of masculinity. Starting from Lorgia Garcia-Pena’s conception of “contradiction” (2016) and Kevin Quashie’s The Sovereignty of Quiet (2012), this article argues that Angie Cruz’s Soledad (2001) and Naima Coster’s Halsey Street (2017) are a counter-archive of woman-centered, Dominican American narratives of return dependent on feminized forms of expression and belonging—namely art, quiet, secrecy, surrender, and interiority. These novels reclaim the power of these acts and spaces along a spectrum of quietude, ranging from acts of alienation to tools for bonding, healing, and growth.