Keywords
leitura
evento
intimidade
corpografia Experiencia migrante
lectura
evento
intimidad
corpografía Migrant experience
Reading
Event
Intimacy
Corpography
How to Cite
Abstract
This article comparatively analyzes the reading experience of the migrant protagonists of the Mexican novel Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas (2013) by Alejandro Hernández and the American-Ethiopian novel The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears (2007) by Dinaw Mengestu. Precarious transit, illegality and the separation of their families blur the identity of the protagonists who are made invisible in a social context that highlights their foreign condition. However, both characters share the psychic and bodily effects that derive from the reading experience according to each novel. Considering reading as an event capable of mobilizing forces, mediating realities, and inscribing meaning in bodies, the hypothesis is applied that, in the intimacy that occurs in language (Pardo), migrant protagonists can recognize, physically and symbolically, their individuality to project a personal narrative that enables them to open to otherness in foreign spaces. Thus, the work of the word, both in reading and writing, offers the protagonists a framework of symbolic references that are manifested both in their discourse and in their choreography (Paveau and Zoberman), from their intimacy, which allows them to link with others and participate in social life in the country of arrival.
References
Alighieri, D. (2014). Divina Comedia. Cátedra.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera. The Nueva Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.
Awan, N., Imran, M. y Farooq, S. A. (2022). Identity crisis in diaspora: A study of Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review, 6(2), 453-460. https://doi.org/10.47205/plhr.2022(6-II)39
Bay, H. (2018). Racial melancholia and poetics of (im)mobility in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. En K. D. Karatzas (Ed.), Time, space and mobility (pp. 83-88). IRF Press.
Calderón Le Joliff, T. (2024). Corpografías adolescentes en la literatura latinoamericana de migración. Anales de Literatura Chilena, 42, 69-83. https://doi.org/10.7764/ANALESLITCHI.42.05
Campaña, S. (2024). Esculpiendo la memoria: Tránsito y experiencia sensorial en Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas (2013) de Alejandro Hernández. En M. J. Punte (Comp.), Atlas precarios: cartografías afectivas en la literatura, el cine y el arte de América Latina (pp. 154-162). Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina.
Cesare, N. (2015). “How did I end up here?”: Dynamic cartography in Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 46(3), 113-136. https://doi.org/10.1353/ari.2015.0015
Chambers, I. (1994). Migrancy, culture, identity. Routledge.
Chartier, R. (1994). The order of books: Readers, authors, and libraries in Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. Polity Press.
Dehaene, S. (2014). El cerebro lector: últimas noticias de las neurociencias sobre la lectura, la enseñanza, el aprendizaje y la dislexia. Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
Gabilondo, Á. y Aranzueque, G. (1999). Introducción. En P. Ricoeur, Historia y narratividad (pp. 9-32). Paidós.
Gálvez, M. (2018). Necropolíticas en torno a la figura del migrante centroamericano en Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas de Alejandro Hernández. Revista Corpo-grafías: Estudios críticos de y desde los cuerpos, 5(5), 32-41. https://doi.org/10.14483/25909398.14204
Garayalde, N. (2019). Escenas de lectura. La lectura como interrupción. Káñina, 43(2), 9-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/rk.v43i2.37080
Gregory, D. (2015). Gabriel’s Map: Cartography and Corpography in Modern War. En P. Meusburger, D. Gregory, y L. Suarsana (Eds.), Geographies of Knowledge and Power (pp. 89-121). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9960-7_4
Hailu, E. (2019). Disillusionment as central in the lives of the African diaspora: The case of two Ethiopian diaspora novels. Ethiopian Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(1), 71-88. https://doi.org/10.59122/135BE63
Hernández, A. (2013). Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas. Tusquets.
Iser, W. (1987). El acto de leer. Taurus. Jeudy, H. -P. y Berenstein Jacques, P. B. (Dirs.). (2006). Corpos e cenários urbanos. EDUFBA.
Littau, K. (2008). Teorías de la lectura: Libros, cuerpos y bibliomanía. Manantial.
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822383574
Mbembe, A. (2011). Necropolítica. Melusina.
Mengestu, D. (2007). The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. Riverhead Books.
Pardo, J. L. (2004). La intimidad. Pre-textos.
Paveau, M. -A. y Zoberman, P. (2009). Corpographèses ou comment on/s’écrit le corps. Itinéraires, (2009-1), 7-19. https://doi.org/10.4000/itineraires.321
Petit, M. (2018). Leer el mundo. Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Ricoeur, P. (2003). Tiempo y narración. III: El tiempo narrado. Siglo XXI.
Rivera, R. D. (2019). Racialización y vulnerabilidad de la migración centroamericana en la novela Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas. Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, 3(2), 23-40. https://doi.org/10.2979/chiricu.3.2.03
Santa Biblia, Reina-Valera (1960). Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas.
Sbiri, K. (2021). Décalage and borderscaping in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. Journal of the African Literature Association, 15(2), 257-271. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2021.1908485
Zárate, J. (2019). Crónica, ficción y testimonio: La migración centroamericana y su paso por México en Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas, de Alejandro Hernández. Diálogos, 23(1), 180-192. https://doi.org/10.4025/dialogos.v23i1.45577
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2026 Universum (Talca. Online)
