Central American migration to the United States in the young adult novel we are not from here, by Jenny Torres Sanchez
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Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
info
ISSN: 1578-6072, 2660-7395
Year of publication: 2023
Issue: 21
Pages: 11-23
Type: Article
More publications in: Anuario de investigación en literatura infantil y juvenil: ANILIJ
Abstract
This article analyses We Are Not from Here (2020), a young adult novel by Jenny Torres Sanchez. The book follows the journey of three adolescents from Guatemala to the United States on top of La Bestia, the train that goes across Mexico. This article analyses the different narrative techniques thatTorres Sanchez utilises to cover the themes and topics that structure the novel. The novel focuses onthe network of altruistic solidarity that has bloomed all over Mexico to assist migrants while illustratingthe brutality of an exhausting journey towards the north, a fact connected to the theoretical frameworkused to approach the text. Accordingly, diaspora theory (Bromley, Ashcroft et al., Brah, Fuentes Kraffczyk) will play a fundamental role in the following analysis exploring the way in which trauma, vulnerability and affect (Pollock, Tal, Butler, Ganteau, Thrailkill) complement each other in the text; and how the Latin American Gothic (Casanova-Vizcaíno and Ordiz) juxtaposes magical realism (Di Iorio Sandín and Perez, Murwood) in certain episodes.
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