Raquel Cepeda's Digital and Literary Publics: Twitter and Bird of Paradise

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2017-10-01
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Myers, Megan
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Myers, Megan Jeanette
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World Languages and Cultures
The Department of World Languages and Cultures seeks to provide an understanding of other cultures through their languages, providing both linguistic proficiency and cultural literacy. Majors in French, German, and Spanish are offered, and other coursework is offered in Arabic, Chinese, Classical Greek, Latin, Portuguese, and Russian
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World Languages and Cultures
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This study charts language use in two public spheres: literary and digital. Cepeda’s 2015 memoir Bird of Paradise, much like fellow Dominican American author Junot Díaz’s works, utilizes untranslated code switching and requires both linguistic and cultural translations on the part of the reader. Cepeda’s digital public, analyzed via her active Twitter account with over 11,000 followers, employs language in different ways to reach a wider, transnational audience. This essay considers how both Cepeda’s literary and digital spheres connect her to a diverse readership and can be considered examples of (digital) activism.

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This article is published as Myers, Megan Jeanette. "Raquel Cepeda's Digital and Literary Publics: Twitter and Bird of Paradise." Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures 2, no. 1 (2017): 40-57. doi: 10.2979/chiricu.2.1.05. Posted with permission.

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Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2017
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