Abstract
This article analyzes Patricia Engel’s Vida (Grove Atlantic, New York, 2010) as a groundbreaking novel that narrates the US Colombian diasporic experience. The article argues that becoming and belonging evolve across the intricacies of the transdiasporic journey of class, race, and gender presented throughout the novel. Through a close reading of Vida, the article asserts the importance of this group’s place in the US immigrant imaginary and the broader Latinx diaspora. Its analysis of Vida affirms the significance of US Colombians as a meaningful and distinctive part of Latinx diaspora studies, asserts the role of US Colombians as part of the transnational Latinx cultural imaginary, and considers how literary analysis about diasporic Colombian fiction might ultimately expand ways of theorizing transnational Latinx cultural production.
Resumen
Este artículo analiza el libro Vida de Patricia Engel (2010) como novela innovadora que narra la experiencia de la diáspora colomboestadounidense. Propone que el devenir y la pertenencia evolucionan dentro de la complejidad de la travesía transdiaspórica de clase, raza y género expuesta a lo largo de esta novela. Partiendo de una lectura a fondo de Vida, el artículo afirma la importancia del lugar de este grupo en el imaginario inmigrante de los Estados Unidos y la diáspora latina en general. Su análisis de la novela afirma la importancia de los colombianos estadounidenses como parte significativa y distintiva de los estudios de la diáspora latina, afirma su papel como parte del imaginario transnacional cultural latino y examina cómo el análisis literario de las obras de ficción colombianas podría a la larga desarrollar nuevas formas de teorizar la producción cultural latina transnacional.
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Notes
I utilize the term “Latinx” as a way to underscore and label identities grounded in the spectrum of Latin American heritage and descendance that can also exist in, between, and beyond the gender binary. While aurally challenging in Spanish, I assert the term as a visual statement of resistance to the patriarchy innate to Spanish, offering a way to categorize the intersectional nature of Spanish-speaking immigrant identities; Latinx studies volumes—such as Imagined Transnationalism: U.S. Latino/a Literature, Culture and Identity (Concannon et al. 2009) and Global Latin(o) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and Regional Migrations (Overmyer-Velázquez and Sepúlveda 2018)—have considered the transnational shifts in studies on Latinx migration by de-privileging the exclusive study on US-centered migratory patterns, ultimately interrogating how Latinx migration has distinctive effects among its varied diasporic subjects.
According to Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics, 3.3 million Colombians are living outside Colombia, and some statistics put that figure closer to 4 million, which amounts to about 10% of the population. For more information on these statistics, see Bushnell and Hudson, “Emigration,” in Colombia: A Country Study (2010).
María Elena Cepeda’s Musical ImagiNation: U.S.-Colombian Identity and the Latin Music Boom provides a more thorough historical overview of immigration patterns of US Colombians. This work broadly interrogates the epicenter of what Cepeda terms the “imagined topographies” of US Colombians (i.e., Miami) and the idea that this imagined community is sustained by and mediated through Colombian music, which functions as a site of self-exploration and self-representation for Colombians in the diaspora.
These authors’ backgrounds exemplify three varieties of Colombian diaspora. Patricia Engel was born in New Jersey to Colombian parents who immigrated to the United States. Julianne Pachico was born in Cambridge, England, raised in Cali, Colombia, and immigrated to the US in 2004 for a bachelor’s degree. Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, earned her MFA from Columbia College, Chicago, and now permanently resides in the United States.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to María Elena Cepeda, Lina Rincón, Jennifer Harford Vargas, and Johana Londoño: your perseverance made this project possible. Dedicated to my Doro, in whom I find my home.
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Esguerra, C. Diasporic home: US Colombian belonging and becoming in Patricia Engel’s Vida. Lat Stud 18, 343–362 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-020-00264-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-020-00264-6