Proximity and Dis/placement. Interrogating Space in Roza Tumba Quema by Claudia Hernández and Dreaming in Cubanby Cristina García

December 9, 2024

👤Author

Name: Sylvia GARCIA-PALURO
Affiliation: University of Houston, USA
Contact: sgarcia3@uh.edu

📄Article

Citation Recommendation: Garcia-Paluro, Sylvia. ‟Proximity and Dis/placement. Interrogating Space in Roza Tumba Quema by Claudia Hernández and Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 50-67.
Pages: 50-76
Language: English
URL: https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/3_Garcia-Paluro.pdf

Abstract

Recent Latin American history (I refer approximately to the period between 1950 and 1990) has had a significant influence on the literature produced by writers in Latin America and abroad since 1950. Even books published within the last fifteen years show a preoccupation with this historical period, such as Claudia Hernández’s Roza tumba quema (published in Spanish in 2017 and in English in 2020 [Slash and Burn]), which makes the Salvadoran Civil War its central event. Books published by Latinx writers in the United States show similar concerns, though they must also contend with the role diaspora has played in shaping how these events are understood or processed. What role, then, do proximity and placement (or displacement) play in shaping the relationship of writers to a history that still impacts Latin American politics and U.S. immigration policy? This paper aims to address this question by comparing the two post-war novels, Roza tumba quema and Dreaming in Cuban, a diasporic novel by Cristina García, and their relationship to space. My suggestion is that an analysis of space can illuminate the ways in which writers navigate trauma and violence and the ways one relates to these experiences in the aftermath of war. More significantly, it suggests that though resolution is never truly reached, a reconceptualization of oneself in relation to these spaces can glimpse alternative ways of being.

Key-words: Latin American fiction, Latinx fiction, space, diaspora, trauma, historical revision

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