21 literary works, one for each year of this century

Migratory stories

photo_camera PHOTO/DIEGO BERRUECO/GATOPARDO via AP  - Valeria Luiselli, autora de "Archivo de niños perdidos" (Desierto sonoro) 

Last December, the journalist and writer Jorge Carrión published in the cultural supplement of the newspaper La Vanguardia a selection of 21 literary works, one for each year of the present century, as a representative and heterogeneous synthesis of the different literary genres and sub-genres, as well as the trends and concerns that inspire the creators of our time, whether they are cultivators of poetry, essays or short stories, whether they write autobiographies, crime novels or stories with the ambition of a total work.  

One of the trends listed is that of creative works conceived around migrations: the work chosen by Jorge Carrión to represent this thematic preference is Sound desert, by Valeria Luiselli (published in Spain by Sexto Piso in 2019). In previous articles we have had occasion to highlight the recurrence of migrations and themes related to them in contemporary artistic practices, a repeated presence that leads us to believe that the migratory movements of human groups make up one of the central issues of our century. 

Portada del libro  "Archivo de niños perdidos", una novela de Valeria Luiselli. El libro cuenta la historia de jóvenes inmigrantes separados de sus familias.  PHOTO/KNOPF via AP 

Ricardo Piglia said that, ultimately, all stories tell of an investigation or tell of a journey. I don't know if this statement can help to explain, even if only partially, the ductility with which migratory stories, as journeys, adapt to different narrative moulds (in a continuum that includes everything from documentary narration that aims to exclude any fictional element, to novels and audiovisual narratives that enter fully into the realm of overt fiction).  

It is in this latter space that Valeria Luiselli's aforementioned novel is situated, which tells us about a journey (the one that takes the protagonist family from New York to Arizona) and two investigations: that of the husband, focused on documenting the traces left by the last free Chiricahua Apaches; and that of the wife, a character who is in charge of making a documentary about the migrant minors who arrive at the southern border of the United States. This allows the author to introduce the theme of migration into the novel, to anchor it in a concrete reference point, and to reconstruct the vicissitudes of these young people on their journey, as well as to give an account of the uncertain situation (awaiting deportation or the granting of refugee status) that they face in the detention centres on the border.  

El escritor italiano Sandro Veronesi, autor de Salvar vidas en el Mediterráneo  PHOTO/ARCHIVO 

This is a story that raises, among other themes (such as the family or the archive of memories), a reflection on displacement, from which the theme of contemporary migrations is integrated in a natural way.   

Sandro Veronesi also talks about a journey (frustrated in his case) in 'Saving Lives in the Mediterranean. A pamphlet against racism' (Anagrama, 2019), although on this occasion we must situate the story in the narrative sphere of tacit fiction, where what is narrated is characterised by its intentional veracity and verifiability. Between pamphlet and testimony, Veronesi's book brings together texts with different functions and intentions: an open letter to Roberto Saviano; a compilation of tweets sent throughout the month of August 2018 by the author to Matteo Salvini, at the time vice-president and Minister of the Interior of the Italian government; a conversation with Óscar Camps, the founder of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms; and a series of small testimonial texts; all of them are connected by the events that took place in the summer of 2018 on the Italian coast, when the Italian government decided to close its ports to NGO boats dedicated to rescuing migrants shipwrecked in the Mediterranean.  

portada del libro Salvar vidas en el Mediterráneo de Sandro Veronesi  PHOTO/ARCHIVO 

"Saving lives' should be read as a call to mobilisation against the policy of "closed ports"; and also as a cry of indignation against the subversion of reality implied by Salvini's words, when he describes the actions of the rescue boats as "cruise ships".  

Who did have the opportunity to travel on one of the rescue operations of the Open Arms was the journalist Yolanda Álvarez. Náufragos sin tierra (Shipwrecked without land) (Roca Editorial, 2020) recounts, with journalistic rigour, "the toughest mission of the Open Arms", embarking on the NGO's boat in the summer of 2019, when once again Salvini tried (this time unsuccessfully) to prevent its disembarkation on Italian soil. 

In short, three readings that have in common the motif of the migratory journey, and which at the same time show the different degrees to which fiction is present in the story, from the tacit and implicit to the manifest and explicit.  

Luis Guerra, Professor of Spanish Language at the European University of Madrid, is one of the main researchers of the INMIGRA3-CM project, financed by the Community of Madrid and the European Social Fund. 

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