Literary Representation of Spanish Immigration in the United States of America (1900-1950)
Transculturation, Hybridization, and the Third Space
Summary
The volume addresses transculturality, hybridization, communication, and spatial cohabitation under the lens of logos and cultural integration, which are axes of the modern construction of individual and collective personalities. The result is original and covers diverse 20th-century Spanish-American autobiographies, creating synergies between them and enriching the study of transnational identities.
(Juan Ignacio Oliva Cruz, University of La Laguna)
This book provides an illuminating study of the phenomenon of twentieth-century Spanish immigration to the United States, analyzing six literary texts, and delving on theoretical concepts such as transculturation or negotiating a new identity.
(Juan Ignacio Guijarro González, University of Sevilla)
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Abstract
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Of Theory and Migration
- 1.1. Approaches to the Concept of Culture
- 1.2. Identity and Culture
- 1.3. The Process of Transculturation
- 1.4. The Question of Mestizaje
- 1.5. The Character of Hybridity Discourse
- Chapter 2: Spaniards in the Melting Pot: A Historical Background
- 2.1. Origins
- 2.2. Building Spanish Communities in the New World
- Chapter 3: Spanish Memory and Migration
- 3.1. The Construction of Collective Identity
- 3.2. Literary Representation of Spanish Immigration to the United States
- 3.3. Morriña: The Return to the Imagined Spain
- 3.4. Spanish Communities and Societies
- Chapter 4: The Representation of Linguistic Hybridization
- 4.1. Prudencio de Pereda’s Portrayal of Spanish Immigration
- 4.1.1. The Teveriano
- 4.1.2. From Andalusia to Brooklyn
- 4.1.3. The Tragedy at Mozares
- 4.2. Claude Morell’s The Lower East Side Kid That Made It Good
- 4.3. Gavin W. González’s Pinnick Kinnick Hill, An American Story
- 4.4. María Dueñas’s Calle 14
- 4.5. Felipe Alfau’s Chromos: The Spanish New York City Novel
- Chapter 5: Cultural Hybridization and the Creation of the Americaniard
- 5.1. De Pereda’s Memoirs: Windmills in Brooklyn and Fiesta
- 5.2. Pinnick Kinnick Hill’s Story
- 5.3. Morell’s Lower East Side Kid: From Spain to New York and Back Again
- 5.4. Felipe Alfau’s creation of the Americaniard
- 5.5. Victoria, Mona, and Luz Arenas: Americaniard Women
- Conclusions
- Works Cited
Introduction
Between 1820 and 1977, around 320,000 Spanish immigrants officially arrived in the United States of America, approximately 250,000 of them before 1950 (Rueda Hernanz 1993, 74). In other words, more Spaniards crossed the Atlantic Ocean to settle in what is now the United States of America than in any other period in history. The story of the Spanish migration to the American continent began with the arrival of the first Spanish explorers led by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492, to the Caribbean island of La Española. This event would initiate a series of voyages that would culminate in the establishment of the first successful settlements by Europeans of Spanish origin during the sixteenth century and the arrival of more Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula (Blazquez Dominguez et al. 2011). For centuries, Spanish immigrants and their descendants have left written records of their experiences in all the countries that today form the American continent. In the case of the United States, this account of history is relevant because it focuses on the literary representation of those writers of Spanish origin who write about the last major period of Spanish immigration between 1900 and 1950 and how they choose to describe and interpret, in a subjective way, the cultural transformation experienced by members of Spanish communities in the United States.
In 2011, Alicante-born director Artur Balder directed the documentary Little Spain about a Spanish neighborhood in New York City located in the area around 14th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenue on the island of Manhattan.1 The work, which was retrieved from relative obscurity, recounts the history of Spanish immigrants in the metropolis, and the documentary archive of the Spanish Benevolent Society, the oldest Spanish society in the United States, founded by Spanish immigrants in the nineteenth century, was a discovery for me and led to a fascination with the almost unknown history of those immigrants who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in search of a better life. This documentary was the genesis of my interest in the topic and spurred my curiosity to deepen my knowledge and begin to research the Spanish diaspora in the United States of America.
This monograph was born out of my passion for Spanish history and literature, two subjects that are not only intertwined when we talk about Spanish immigration in the United States but especially in the city of New York, where the growth of the arrival of Spaniards and its relevance during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century was overshadowed by other immigrant groups from the same period (Dolan 2010). This work will focus on a segment of the Spanish population that has remained invisible and forgotten for decades, not only by history but also by researchers and even by their own country. Special attention will be given to the Spaniards that migrated to the United States, and especially those who decided to stay in New York City and in Harrison County or, like in the case of Ros, nickname for Erostrato Varona in Prudencio de Pereda’s Fiesta: A Novel of Modern Spain (1953), those who returned to Spain after years in the American country to reconnect with their Spanish roots. This little-known part of the United States’ history and the underrepresentation of Spanish immigrants there have become an opportunity to explore a specific time and a space only studied by a few scholars.
The aim of this book is to provide evidence that there is a historical place for these invisible immigrants’ stories, a place where they can be remembered and that can be used to show a process of cultural transformation. The depiction of Spanish immigration during the first half of the twentieth century (1900–1950) in the United States through literature is sparse; however, it is also a unique space where these Spaniards can find their place for representation. As a result, the specific goal of this work will be to study how this immigrant community is (re)presented in a few selected works, written by authors of Spanish origin, and to delve into their lives through the main characters and their narratives. This book tries to demonstrate that there is a cultural transition that these Spaniards experienced during the decades when they had to negotiate their identity and that it can be analyzed through literature based on and inspired by this period of history. The texts chosen prove that this transition can be traced using literature and thus construct a reliable literary representation of how the native Spanish culture of these immigrants merged with the dominant Anglo-American one.
The six stories selected will be examined to study the representation of memory, witnessing, and the use of language to identify the different states of cultural hybridity in which the characters find themselves throughout their lives and how they evolve in the different spaces and times presented in these texts. For decades, Spanish communities in the United States managed to preserve many features of their culture. The representation of the cultural transformation of the characters that portray these communities and their interaction with the environment shows a clear image of the Spaniards who settled in the country looking for a better life. This representation will be explored through the processes of transculturation and hybridization, as well as through the theory of identity of the Third Space.
These texts have been chosen for a few strategic reasons: first, because they are six of the scarce existing descriptions dedicated exclusively to the legacy of the Spanish community in the United States of America between 1900 and 1950. Second, because each text is set in a different but continuous temporal context that will give a specific and diverse perspective of the unique realities that could be found in the Spanish community during the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. And third, because they allow us to evaluate the legacy of twentieth-century migration. The contexts in which the texts are set include Spain, West Virginia, and New York City, in the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. Therefore, the specifics of each text and the background of their authors will allow for a better understanding of this literature and how the writers represent the experience of Spanish immigration in the United States. Accordingly, I will focus part of my analysis on the process of cultural hybridity of these immigrants and the connection to their authors, as each one of these books is partly biographical and partly a memoir about how these invisible immigrants had to juggle their cultural transition in a new country to survive and thrive.
The breadth of the literature selected enables us to create a chronological timeline of the works to show the variety of spaces that constitute this analysis. The first text that introduces the Spanish immigrants to the American nation is Pinnick Kinnick Hill: An American Story/Las colinas sueñan en español (2003), by Gavin W. González, set in Harrison County, West Virginia. It begins in 1913, when the narrator’s father becomes a local beer distributor. Windmills in Brooklyn (1960), by Prudencio de Pereda, is set in New York in the 1920s and narrates the childhood and youth of Prudencio with his family and their family friend, Agapito, around the world of the teverianos, or Spanish cigar sellers. The Lower East Side Kid That Made It Good: The Autobiography of Claude Morell (2008), by Claude Morell himself and edited by his daughter Teresa Morell, is set mainly in New York and begins in 1928, when eleven-month-old Claude arrives in the city with his parents. María Dueñas’s Las hijas del Capitán (2018) is set in New York in 1936 and focuses on the lives of three young girls from Spain: Victoria, Mona, and Luz Arenas. Chromos (1948), by Felipe Alfau, follows the adventures of the narrator and his two friends during the 1940s in New York City. Finally, de Pereda’s Fiesta: A Novel of Modern Spain (1953) is set in Spain in 1948, where Erostrato Varona, also known as Ros, returns to Mozares, his family’s village in Burgos, fifteen years after his last visit to Spain.
In their analysis of the literary production on immigration, Konrad Bercovici’s Around the World in New York (1924) and Julio Camba’s La ciudad automática (1932) will be briefly explored, due to their framing of the literary period studied from 1900 to 1950, but will not be analyzed in depth as they are both considered travel literature with a comical, almost mocking tone, and they lack the presence of a story and a number of characters of Spanish origin where hybridization takes place. Other types of literary production from this time period and based on the experience of Spanish authors in the United States will not be taken into account, such as Poeta en Nueva York (1940), by Federico García Lorca, or Exceso de equipaje: mis viajes a Estados Unidos, monólogos, películas, cuentos (1950), by the Spanish writer and playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela, due to their lack of connection to the phenomenon of cultural hybridity. Similarly, other works of fiction about Spaniards in the United States where the theme of Spanish migration is not relevant, such as Llámame Brooklyn (2006), by Eduardo Lago, have not been included in this study. It is important to consider that, with the exception of Las hijas del capitán (2018), the other five texts were originally written in English. As a result, language will be a fundamental element when analyzing the stories as well as the interactions in Spanish and English that take place in these narratives and that outline the cultural identity of the characters of these works and their authors. The choice of Dueñas’s novel, being the only one written in the twenty-first century and not by an immigrant, is deliberate, since Dueñas interviewed the last survivors and witnesses of that period, some of whom I had the honor to meet. She also used the original archives of the Spanish Benevolent Society, dating back to 1889, which I was also able to use in my research, to recount her story.2 Therefore, Las hijas del Capitán represents the result that the phenomenon of collective memory and literature written by writers of Spanish origin has had on later authors such as Dueñas. The author decides to revisit the spaces described by other writers, thus creating literature inspired by real historical facts but whose main characters are fictional.
To understand these narratives, I will combine the theoretical framework with the historical background before focusing on the phenomenon of the cultural transformation and coexistence of the cultures represented in these stories. It is important to consider that, again, except for Dueñas’s Las hijas del Capitán, the novels are written by first-generation Spanish immigrants (Alfau) or second-generation Spaniards who were raised in one of the Spanish communities (de Pereda, González) in the United States. The case of Morell is especially interesting because, although he migrated to America with his parents, he was only eleven months old, so he could be included in both groups, but especially in the second one, as he lived in the American country until he became an adult. Furthermore, the historical background will focus on the history of the Spanish immigrants in the United States, especially in New York City, between the 1840s and the 1950s, although other centers of Spanish migration will also be mentioned when the waves of Spaniards who arrived in the States were more significant and constituted the basis of the Spanish communities.
I will also delve into the cultural hybridization of the characters between their Spanish culture of origin and the Anglo-American culture of reception, represented through topics such as family, religion, tradition, and the interpersonal relationships among the characters. Scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and Mary Louise Pratt have examined the effects of hybridity, colonization, biculturalism, and transculturation and have shown that migration creates cultural conflicts between groups, producing multicultural situations where the clash of cultures plays a major role, thus giving way to new realities and identities. The importance of the use of language, memory, and observation to create an image of the past will also be examined to decipher the complex and contradictory reality of the Spanish immigrants represented in these books. The clash of the dominant and the dominated culture is depicted, and the possibilities of the interaction between them entail a wide variety of possibilities: cultural death or cultural evolution, the non-assimilation of the first generation, the assimilation of the 1.5 and the second generation—who are integrated but also keep their culture of origin—and the following generations, who are more susceptible to losing their culture. This book aims to analyze how the characters evolve and are changed by the interaction between their culture of origin and their culture of reception using the notion of transculturation and biculturalism and examining how a new hybrid self is created when they engage in the process of constructing a new culture. I will use concepts such as acculturation, deculturation, and neoculturation to study the complex transitions between the Spanish and the American cultures and to analyze the effects of these changes in the characters portrayed by González, de Pereda, Morell, Alfau, and Dueñas.
Another element to highlight in the literary description of Spanish immigration in the United States between 1900 and 1950 in the selected texts is the varied representation of the different origins of these Spanish immigrants. Among them are Andalusians, like Dueñas’s protagonists Victoria, Mona, and Luz Arenas, from Málaga, or the family described by de Pereda in Windmills in Brooklyn. There are Basques, like those described by Alfau in Chromos; Galicians, like de Pereda’s Agapito López; Valencians, like Claude Morell himself and his family; Asturians, like the community of Spaniards living in Gonzalez’s West Virginia; and Castilians, like Ros Varona, who flies to his hometown of Mozares in the province of Burgos.
My claim is that these immigrants did not erase their Spanish identity but rather evolved when mixing the culture of origin with the one of reception, thereby creating a new hybrid self. In all six stories, the main characters negotiate their identity through biculturalism and the transculturation phenomenon, the cultural transition that Spanish immigrants experienced after their arrival to the States, a new context where the representation of their identity blurs as the characters are assimilated into American society. This transition is represented by a wide range of features, such as displacement, bilingualism, nostalgia, and so on, creating a broad spectrum of possibilities for an examination and analysis of how Spanish immigration literature represents and replicates their idea of Spain in the United States, a place where “the exile aspires to reproduce, rather than recast, native traditions” (Pérez Firmat 1996, 8). As a result, the people that inhabit these texts exemplify the negotiation of the identity that Spanish immigrants were forced to face. Consequently, the particularities of each story help to better understand these narratives as the phenomenon of emigration prompts the characters’ negotiation of their self, which transforms depending on the time and space where they and their descendants are displaced from their original culture.
The characters embody the concept of transculturation, coined and defined by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 in his work Cuban counterpoint, tobacco and sugar, and its different stages (acculturation, deculturation, and neoculturation), as the transition from a Spanish to a Spanish-American identity. They contribute to providing a picture of Spanish immigration in the United States that can complete the space created by mainstream history and literature. The use of the characters and their interactions with other Spaniards around them is essential to see the diversity of the Spanish community and to understand the different approaches that they use to succeed in the American nation while negotiating their identity. Additionally, the space that these invisible immigrants hold in their new country has to do with the importance of the when and the where, the time and the place where these communities were constructed.
Details
- Pages
- 280
- Publication Year
- 2025
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631929629
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631929636
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631929612
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22549
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2025 (September)
- Keywords
- Spanish immigration 20th-century literature identity transculturation hybridization cultural transformation American culture literary analysis historical context personal narratives language use cultural assimilation immigrant experience Spanish-American studies
- Published
- Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2025. 280 pp., 3 tables.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
