The Work of Najat El Hachmi in the Context of Spanish-Moroccan Literature

This paper situates the work of Najat El Hachmi within the context of Spanish-Moroccan literature and seeks to highlight the complex variety of texts and ideas of belonging that result from Moroccan migration to Spain. In contrast to other Moroccan writers residing in Spain, El Hachmi does not write in Spanish, but in Catalan. Her texts do not focus on the nostalgia for the home country or the problems of living between two cultures that characterize the works of some other Spanish-Moroccan and Amazigh-Catalan writers, but instead convey a new sense of belonging by describing the emotional estrangement from Morocco and reconfiguring of a Catalan identity. Moreover, her work cannot be confined exclusively to an autobiographical account of the migration experience. Rather, in L'últim patriarca [The Last Patriarch] and La filla estrangera [The Foreign Daughter] she uses that experience to emphasize broader issues of human existence, and in La caçadora de cossos [The Body Hunter] she goes even beyond this topic.