African Immigrants in Contemporary Spanish Texts ed. by Debra Faszer-McMahon and Victoria L. Ketz (review)

In their masterful and comprehensive book African Immigrants in Contemporary Spanish Texts, editors Debra Faszer-McMahon and Victoria L. Ketz assemble thirteen essays that provide multiple perspectives on literature produced in Spanish that deal directly with the country’s existential crisis in the twenty-first century, the personification of which has become the bodies of North African migrants. The editors provide a thorough and important historical overview in their introduction; there, they reveal that “18.6 percent of all immigrants in 2008 came from Africa” (4), meaning that in the year marking the apex of movement into the country, the vast majority of newcomers in the first decade of the twentieth century originated from outside of the African continent. They also highlight that, in comparison to other member countries of the European Union and until its economic crisis, Spain was rather welcoming of this migratory flow. Nevertheless, the increase in migrant populations, particularly from the Maghreb, has destabilized the foundational myths of a nation that identifies and emphasizes its origins specifically in the expulsion of Muslims in the fifteenth century, after seven centuries of occupation. Faszer-McMahon and Ketz conclude this introductory essay by providing an informative bibliography of contemporary studies written in English and Spanish that examine both theoretically and textually this current of immigrant literature. Indeed, the essays in this collection examine and analyze poems, films, short stories, and novels produced in the last three decades that defy the predominant fiction of a unified, ethnically-homogeneous Spanish nation, thereby underscoring how Spain, much like its neighbors on the continent, continues to confront its colonialist legacies in Africa.

While Shanna Lino’s “Mediated Moralities of Immigration: Metaphysical Detection in Marta Sanz’s Black, black, black” examines the detective genre as one that confronts larger issues of ethics, Gema Pérez-Sánchez’s “What Happens on the Other Side of the Strai(gh)t? Clandestine Migrations and Queer Racialized Desire in Juan Bonilla’s Neopicaresque Novel Los príncipes nubios (2003)” highlights the apparent limitations of the Spanish democratic project. Here Pérez-Sánchez analyzes Bonilla’s novel, aptly tracing a history of anxieties related to both the arrival of immigrants in this century as well as to the development of a national progressive political agenda in relation to the LGBTQ communities.

In “Alienation in the ‘Promised Land’: Voices of Maghrebi Women in the Theater of Antonia Bueno,” Victoria L. Ketz examines two plays, Aulidi (2006) and Zahra: Favorita de Al-Andalus (2009), in which the playwright privileges the voice of Moroccan women, establishing them as protagonists in plays that employ, as Ketz argues, techniques resonant with Brecht’s Theater of Alienation. With Ana Corbalán’s “Searching for Justice in Return to Hansala by Chus Gutiérrez: Cultural Encounters between Africa and Europe,” we read of a film that shows a reverse migration story, as the protagonist, a Spanish shopkeeper, accompanies the sister of a man who drowned in the Straits of Gibraltar on her return to Morocco to bury her brother. While this film, based on a true story, is one of fiction, in her essay, “Celebrity, Diplomacy, Documentary: Javier Bardem and Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony,” Jill Robins looks at the effectiveness of celebrity diplomacy in the case of Javier Bardem and his efforts to bring more attention to the political plight of Saharawis in the genre of documentary film.

Raquel Vega-Durán looks at the non-profit organizations, films, and short story anthologies that employ the metaphor of las dos orillas in her essay, “Tales of Two Shores: The Re-Establishment of Dialogue across the Strait of Gibraltar.” Instead of featuring the supposed separation between Spain and Northern Africa, these groups emphasize the commonalities of the cultures between the peoples of the two landmasses. Vega-Durán highlights the film Cuento de las dos orillas (2007), which recasts the conquest of Al-Andalus by stating unequivocally: “More than 500,000...