Adrian Kane, professor of Spanish, recently presented his paper, “Trauma and Historical Memory in U.S. Central American Fiction,” at the Latin American Studies Association International Congress in Bogotá, Colombia.
His presentation offered an analysis of how Francisco Goldman’s “The Ordinary Seaman” and Ana Reyes’ “The House in the Pines” portray the individual traumas of their characters as a mechanism for constructing historical memories of the Central American revolutions for an English-speaking audience. His paper argues that by portraying the trauma that many U.S. Central Americans and their families have experienced by linking their migration with the history of U.S. military intervention and economic colonization in the isthmus and by celebrating distinct aspects of their cultural identity, these novels constitute an important step toward increasing the visibility of U.S. Central Americans.