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Voices emerging from the border. A reading of the autobiographies by Najat El Hachmi and Saïd El Kadaoui as political interventions

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MIQUEL P.-A.

Planeta Literatur. Journal of Global Literary Studies

2014

issue 1. Europe - Maghreb: exchanged glances / L'Europe et le Maghreb: les regards croisés

33-52

In the early 2000s, several studies anticipated that a generation of diasporic writers would emerge in the Spanish context. This prediction has been definitely fulfilled during the last decade with the publication of the works by Laila Karrouch, Najat El Hachmi and Saïd El Kadaoui, all of them based in Catalonia. These new diasporic writers, who left Morocco being kids, set a contrast with the previous representations of immigration. The process of border-crossing is lived and incorporated by them, and not only imagined and recreated as it is the case for the writers on either side of the border. Hence, the current paper proposes a reading of Jo també sóc catalana by Najat El Hachmi and Cartes al meu fill. Un català de soca-rel, gairebé by Saïd El Kadaoui, focusing particularly on how these authors position themselves at the border as a mediating space. For this purpose, I will firstly draw a brief outline of the social and historical context in which these two autobiographies are published and the literary trajectories of both El Hachmi and El Kadaoui. In this regard, it is crucial to explore the specifics of Catalonia because these may explain why this first generation of diasporic authors occurs there and not somewhere else in Spain. Secondly, I will discuss how the formal aspects of the two autobiographies contribute to conveying a message with political implications. Finally, I will analyse how El Hachmi and El Kadaoui position themselves at the border and use their intimacy as a political tool to set themselves up as referents for the next generation. From the border, they create a space of enunciation from which they can tell their story and warn their own children of the typifications that they may experience as diasporic subjects. The border becomes not just a space for public intervention but the legacy they hand over to the forthcoming generation.

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1 Planeta Literatur. Journal of Global Literary Studies

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1 MIQUEL P.-A.

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Voices emerging from the border. A reading of the autobiographies by Najat El Hachmi and Saïd El Kadaoui as political interventions