Writing Mobility, Writing Stillness: Silvia Mistral’s Transatlantic Displacements

Abstract

abstract:The article shows that mobility and stillness are entangled with one another and that specific mobile subjects are, following Michael Rothberg’s work, implicated in the stillness of others. The analysis focuses on figures negotiating tensions between mobility and stillness: deported workers traveling from Cuba to Spain in 1931, soldiers and civilians meeting in a hotel during the Spanish Civil War in 1938, and Spanish refugees interacting with locals in Martinique during an unexpected layover in 1939. Mistral’s works cross borders between countries and national literatures and this article considers her writing in relation to Katherine Anne Porter’s novel Ship of Fools, to competing and transnational narratives about race and class during the Spanish Civil War, and to the works of Martinican writers.