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Although a year separates the publication of the debut novels by Dominican Americans Nelly
Rosario and Angie Cruz, these are two extraordinary texts that deal with the marginalization of
the Dominican people, especially women, through the figure of the ghost. Both novels feature
ghost-figures as the women in these stories try to openly confront and accept the realities of
their pasts for the sake of themselves and their families in the present and future. Sociologist
Avery Gordon states that the ghost is “not simply a dead or missing person, but a social figure,
and investigating it can lead to the dense site where history and subjectivity make social life.”1
Ghost-figures are present in lives and stories to demonstrate new, different knowledge and
assert critical points about history, culture, and subjectivity. In Song of the Water Saints and
Soledad, Rosario and Cruz, respectively, use the figure of the ghost as a generous trope that
imaginatively reconnects women in families across vast space, time, and apparent differences.
Such usage acts as a corrective to the corruptive influence of the United States and the West
in the hispanophone Caribbean, specifically the Dominican Republic.2
1 Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2008), 8.
2 Scholars such as Victoria Chevalier, Marion Rohrleitner, Donette Francis, Cristina Herrera, Elizabeth West, Juanita Heredia,
Omaris Zamora, and Rebeca L. Hey-Colón have all written about race, gender, sex/sex work, spirituality, motherhood,
I will clarify this essay’s argument by first explaining the theoretical praxis of the ghost,
its way of haunting, and the experience of cultural hauntings or ghostings as they apply to
literature and extend to other Dominican American cultural texts. Then I will examine how the
ghost of Graciela, the main character in Song of the Water Saints, and the “living ghost” of
mental illness, the souvenir artifact, Afro-Latina embodied knowledge, and water imagery in one or both of these novels.
No scholarly examination of these novels has addressed the figure of the ghost and its critical work.
3 In Song of the Water Saints, syphilis becomes essential to the narration of plot and character (namely, Graciela), but
detailed analysis in this essay will show how it also works on a conceptual level as a critical metaphor.
18 [ Susan C. Méndez ] Ghosts in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Angie Cruz’s Soledad
4 María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, “Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities,” in María del Pilar Blanco and
Esther Peeren, eds., The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (New York: Blooms-
bury, 2013), 1.
5 Ibid., 7.
6 Ibid., 13, 16.
7 Anne McClintock, “Imperial Ghosting and National Tragedy: Revenants from Hiroshima and Indian Country in the War on
Terror,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 821.
8 See Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 7.
9 Ibid., 8.
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Besides the production of new knowledge, examination of the ghost and its haunting can shape
and reconstruct one’s subjectivity. A haunting is not just about reliving a past event, though
“intergenerational trauma [can be seen] as a haunting force.”10 As Gordon points out, “Haunting,
unlike trauma, is distinctive for producing a something-to-be-done.”11 This “something-to-be
only in the last quarter of [the twentieth] century. . . . Stories of cultural haunting differ from
other twentieth-century ghost stories in exploring the hidden passageways not only of the
individual psyche but also of a people’s historical consciousness.”16 Cultural hauntings are the
latest evolution in the tradition of ghost stories that connect the individual and her community
16 Kathleen Brogan, Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1998), 4–5.
17 Ibid., 15.
18 Dixa Ramírez, Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the Nineteenth Century to the
Present (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 3.
19 Ibid., 5, 6.
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Ghostly Circuits
The first chapter of Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints begins in 1916 by focusing on
the life story of Graciela, a young girl living in poverty in a rural area of the Dominican Republic
during the first of the two US occupation periods.20 Military occupation means Graciela lives
20 As a consequence of the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States intervened in the governance of
the Dominican Republic through the occupation period of 1916–24.
21 In Latin America, yanqui is a usually derogatory term referring to things or people from the United States, regardless of their
region of origin within this country.
22 Nelly Rosario, Song of the Water Saints (New York: Vintage, 2002), 15; hereafter cited in the text.
23 Marion Rohrleitner, “Looming Prairies and Blooming Orchids: The Politics of Sex and Race in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the
Water Saints,” Antípodas 20 (2009): 192.
24 In “Looming Prairies and Blooming Orchids,” Marion Rohrleitner examines three time periods in the novel (the US occupa-
tion of 1916, the massacre of 1937, and the Trujillo assassination in 1961) to establish the racism that links the Spanish
Empire, the United States, and the Dominican Republic under Trujillo. For this essay, however, the central historical refer-
ence point will be the US occupation from 1916 to 1924.
22 [ Susan C. Méndez ] Ghosts in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Angie Cruz’s Soledad
from an altar. It is not a white sheet with slits for eyes, or a howl in the wind. It is not in the
eerie highlights of a portrait, or in the twitch of a nerve.” In other words, she presents not in
the typical form one thinks of as a ghost. Graciela emerges as no frightful spectacle, no visual
or auditory disturbance, nor inexplicable incident (big or small). Instead, “her ghost is in the
Despite Leila’s intelligence and the many opportunities she has had since her grandparents
emigrated with her to the United States, she cannot grasp her great-grandmother’s nuanced
points. Graciela wants Leila to not be distracted by the superficialities of life, to take off her
skin and “shed the troubles of life.” She wants Leila to strip down to the bones and focus on
what matters: herself, her education, and her family. Leila will find her heart this way and keep
it because it contains truth. This discovery of truth will not be easy, as Graciela tells Leila she
must “bleed [her] heart” for it. Such valuable advice can be hard to decipher. Leila does not
comprehend this exchange with her great-grandmother; she cannot see what unites her with
Graciela besides a familial bond. Graciela, in contrast, does see what unites them, as Leila
is the young woman Graciela once was. Sexual disease and violation unite these women as
Graciela contracts the syphilis that kills her from Eli Cavalier, a German man who exploited her
while she was on her first sojourn away from her family, while Leila survives sexual assault.
Graciela’s infection with syphilis not only advances the plot and her character development
but also serves as a metaphor for the hazards of the colonial experience. A whole chapter in
the novel narrates the aftermath of the US departure from the island. The occupation’s effects
are clear: “In the wake of the Americans’ departure remained a corps of locals well trained in
the tactics of repression. The troops left behind a certain appetite for American goods. . . .
The troops also left a trail of deaths and births: mourning mothers and mothers of fair-haired
children” (122–23). This lingering presence and the consequences of the US occupation parallel
the story of Graciela and Casimiro’s marriage (after she returns from her first sojourn, where
she meets Eli) and how it is affected by past and present decisions and actions, especially
SX67 [ 3.2022 ] 23
infidelity. In this chapter, Graciela learns of Casimiro’s infidelity with Flavia, who is married
to El Gordo, and El Gordo has an affair with a woman named Celeste. Jealousy and mental
instability ensue as Graciela follows Casimiro around until he arrives at Flavia’s house, where
Graciela “attack[s] Flavia with her very own hands instead of a meat cleaver” (126). Flavia,
Waited on a long line to get born. Still, life dealt me a shit deal. Don’t listen to whoever invents
magics about me. Always tried to live what I wanted. Never pretended to be a good woman.
Never tried to be a bad one. Just lived what I wanted. That’s all my mystery. Forget dirty tongues.
They’re next door, in the soup, even in your own head. Some weak soul always trying to slip their
tongue inside your mouth, clean as a baby’s pit. You, listen. My life was more salt than goat.
Lived between memory and wishes . . . but how much can a foot do inside a tight shoe? Make
something better of it than me. (242; italics in original)
Notably, Graciela no longer engages in a conversation with Leila; instead, she narrates her
experience of a life filled with limitations and directs Leila to “make something better of it than
[her].” Moreover, Graciela instructs Leila not to believe those who would misrepresent Graciela’s
life; she simply tried to live what she wanted. Graciela wants Leila to realize and seize her
opportunities (such as following her love of biology to medical school), as she has so many
more than Graciela ever did. As Victoria Chevalier writes, “Unlike her great-grandmother, who
suffered from a lack of historical, collective memory, the novel’s ending figures the beginnings of
24 [ Susan C. Méndez ] Ghosts in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Angie Cruz’s Soledad
an access to memory that will hopefully gird Leila in her struggles in the United States.”25 When
Leila hears Graciela’s voice again, she gains access to the past, knowledge about Graciela’s
life that allows her to appreciate her own even after having experienced sexual violence.
At this critical point in Leila’s life, Graciela, as a fellow survivor of sexual exploitation,
25 Victoria A. Chevalier, “Alternative Visions and the Souvenir Collectible in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints,” in Lyn
Di Iorio Sandín and Richard Perez, eds., Contemporary US Latino/a Literary Criticism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), 54.
26 Ibid., 37.
27 Carpenter and Kolmar, introduction to Haunting the House of Fiction, 10.
28 Manolo’s ghost and the collective of ghosts who once were Olivia’s clients also exist in this text. The “ghost” of Olivia will
be the focus as she is the one whose presence implicitly critiques the influence of the West in the Dominican Republic and
works to reunite the generations in her family.
29 Angie Cruz, Soledad (New York: Scribner, 2001), 9; hereafter cited in the text.
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This “time out of her life” labels her a “living” ghost, which Gorda, Olivia’s sister, only verifies
late in the novel, even though it seems to be understood by all characters throughout. When
Victor, Olivia’s brother, brings his girlfriend home and introduces her to his family members,
Gorda says, “Why don’t you just tell her she’s the family’s living ghost? Except she doesn’t
Even the quiet things like Flaca’s soft breathing when she lies next to me, or the water evaporat-
ing in the glass my mother puts under the bed to drain away the bad spirits, I can hear them.
. . . I can hear it all. . . . I can even smell the acetone of Flaca’s nail polish hours after it dries,
Soledad’s shampoo, the wilting flowers in the room that smell like dust and sweaty socks. . . .
When I am touched I want to scream. (25)30
Her heightened abilities to hear, smell, and touch place her in a constant state of hyperaware-
ness and perception. Olivia’s enhanced condition supports an understanding of her as a type
of specter. For these reasons, Olivia serves as a ghost in this text, a presence that strengthens
maternal bonds and presents Soledad with the memory and knowledge she needs to remake
how she understands herself and her community.
Olivia’s ghostly state reveals the rift between mother and daughter to be caused by the
persistent corrosive influence of the deceased father-figure, Manolo. Olivia’s unhappiness drives
Soledad out of the house at the age of eighteen. When Soledad returns home to confront her
mother’s ghostly condition, she realizes some nuanced points about her parents’ relationship.
In a memory of a conversation between mother and daughter, Olivia reveals how Manolo
causes his family’s unhappiness: “Soledad, there is nothing worse than a man who doesn’t
get what he wants, my mother said this every time my father, Manolo, slept on the living room
couch, or when he spent nights away from the apartment. She said it when she was beat up,
when she had to go to the hospital with broken bones” (14). The abuse leads Olivia to push
Manolo out of their apartment window while a young Soledad watches, but Manolo’s reign
of terror does not end with his death: “My mother claimed my father used to visit her. That’s
how she used to explain a fuse going out, the loud pounding sound that made the neighbors
downstairs hit their ceiling with a broom stick” (20). Eventually, Soledad realizes how living
with violence, memories of violence, and the consequences of violence for so many years may
have harmed her mother to the point where Olivia now resides in her sleep in order to resolve
her issues. Perhaps Olivia regrets subjecting her daughter to this life of violence and wonders
if she can ever make up for it. The crucial accusation that Manolo’s abuse lies at the heart of
Olivia’s ghostly state provides only one reason for Olivia’s condition.
When Olivia tells Soledad the story about how she and Manolo met, a telling omission
indicates another cause for Olivia’s state. Olivia tells Soledad that she met Manolo in the
30 From this point, all of Olivia’s ghostly thoughts are in italics in the original.
26 [ Susan C. Méndez ] Ghosts in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Angie Cruz’s Soledad
Dominican Republic while she was working but he was on vacation. Soledad asks where Olivia
was working, and she responds, “I was doing the kind of work I hope you never have to do”
(19). Olivia becomes a sex worker in order to avoid an arranged marriage to a man named
Pelao, her father’s friend.31 She meets Manolo as a client and believes him to be different since
31 When an old Swedish man comes to the countryside and tells young women like Olivia that he manages models all over
the world and that she could earn enough money with him to buy a house, Olivia agrees to leave home. When Olivia arrives
at Puerto Plata, she realizes the true nature of the old Swedish man’s business when she begins to sexually service male
tourists.
32 Cristina Herrera, “The Madwoman Speaks: Madness and Motherhood in Angie Cruz’s Soledad,” Journal of Caribbean
Literatures 7, no. 1 (2011): 55.
33 See Ramírez, Colonial Phantoms, 182.
SX67 [ 3.2022 ] 27
“Did she ever say no to him? And if she did, did he hit her, like Manolo hit me? And when we
talk she’s not looking away from my bruises. Every time I come to her she receives me with
a first aid kit, licks my wounds, combs my hair and tells me that I don’t ever have to return to
Manolo because I deserve so much better” (120).34 Donette Francis argues that all of Olivia’s
34 Don Fernando, Sosa’s husband and Olivia’s father, is not portrayed as abusive, but the questioning shows Olivia’s deep
desire to be truthful and comforted.
35 Donette Francis, “Novel Insights: Sex Work, Secrets, and Depression in Angie Cruz’s Soledad,” in Faith Smith, ed., Sex and
the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 61.
28 [ Susan C. Méndez ] Ghosts in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Angie Cruz’s Soledad
not protected Soledad from psychological or physical harm by keeping her past a secret; she
never could have, no matter what she did. Francis attests to “the impact over time for female
sex workers.” She writes that “one’s choices are never simply about the individual but in fact
impact one’s entire family and future generations,” thus women, like Olivia, embody their pain
36 Ibid., 58.
37 When Soledad awakens, she holds her mother’s photo, not the photo of herself that she wanted to retrieve. The question
then becomes, Who saves whom? Moreover, when Olivia stares at the water after Soledad’s dive, it is ambiguous whom
Olivia sees in the water, herself or Soledad. Again, the ambiguity here is crucial as it emphasizes the intimate connection
between mother and daughter.
SX67 [ 3.2022 ] 29
discovers Olivia’s history as a sex worker through a recovered list that describes her clientele
but hearing her parents’ story from Olivia herself will matter.38 In short, Olivia’s living-ghost
state gave her the time, energy, and respite she needed in order to reflect on her life, decide
what action must be taken, and execute that action. By letting the truth come out and letting
38 Soledad pieces her mother’s history together when she discovers three tins with the names Manolo, Soledad, and Olivia
written on them in her mother’s apartment. When she opens the tin with her mother’s name, she finds a list that features
dates and descriptions of men next to the dates. When Soledad reads the list, she conjures the ghost of each man into the
apartment. They appear naked. Then Soledad knows Olivia’s secret.