Californian Flânerie in Karolina Waclawiak’s How to Get into the Twin Palms

Sonia Caputa

doi:10.31261/https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2021.27.09

Published: 2021-06-30

Vol. 27 No. 1 (2021)

Californian Flânerie in Karolina Waclawiak’s How to Get into the Twin Palms

Sonia Caputa

Section: Women’s Travel Narratives from the 19th Century until Today

https://doi.org/10.31261/https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2021.27.09

Abstract

Unlike most of the immigration novels created by contemporary Polish American female writers, How to Get into the Twin Palms written by Karolina Waclawiak, does not focus on the hardships of assimilation into American culture but depicts experiments with ethnic cross-dressing. Waclawiak, a representative of the so-called one-and-a half generation of Polish immigrants from the 1980s Solidarity wave, reinvents the immigration story as her protagonist, Zosia, a Polish American resident of Los Angeles, yearns to become Russian in order to be granted entrance to the mysterious and appealing Russian nightclub. The protagonist’s transformation into Anya goes hand in hand with her exploration of the City of Angels, the
postmodern megalopolis with neon lights and pavements reaching the horizon. Thus, Zosia/Anya becomes a Californian flâneuse, the urban scrutinizer and strolling observer of the what is known as the most photographed but least photogenic city in the United States. In this context, the main aim of this presentation will be to explore Californian flânerie in Waclawiak’s novel: while walking down the city streets the narrator flâneuse reflects on her home (Polish) culture, underscores her status as an immigrant outsider, and delves into the questions of alienation as well as defamiliarization. Hence, one may assume that flânerie itself contributes to the transformation of Waclawiak’s protagonist.

Keywords:

flânerie , Los Angeles , Polish American , gentrification , Karolina Waclawiak

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Caputa, S. (2021). Californian Flânerie in Karolina Waclawiak’s How to Get into the Twin Palms. Postscriptum Polonistyczne, 27(1), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.31261/https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2021.27.09

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Sonia Caputa

sonia.caputa@us.edu.pl
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8190-2767

Affiliation:

Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach Poland

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Sonia Caputa currently works as Assistant Professor in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Silesia. She holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the same university, she is a fellow of 2014 and 2016 Salzburg Seminar American Studies Association Symposium, a participant of the summer Fulbright scholarship “The United States Department of State 2015 Institute on Contemporary U.S. Literature” (University of Louisville, Kentucky) and a member of the Polish Association for American Studies. She is a guest co-editor of RIAS Online Journal (Review of International American Studies Association: Wor(l)ds Apart: Navigating Differences, and a co-editor of the upcoming volume of Grand Themes of American Literature: Love (Silesian University Press). She teaches contemporary American ethnic literature and the survey courses of the history of American literature, her interests include but are not limited to: ethnicity, assimilation as well as stereotypes in literature and films.

Vol. 27 No. 1 (2021)
Published: 2021-06-30

ISSN: 1898-1593

eISSN: 2353-9844

10.31261/PS_P

Publisher

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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Californian Flânerie in Karolina Waclawiak’s How to Get into the Twin Palms

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