June 21

9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

1.B.03

Laura Hydak

Abstract: This paper analyzes Àngels Aymar’s 2007 play La Indiana. The play uses melodramatic techniques to rebuke and demand recognition of Spain’s historical participation in the slave trade. The play features an indiana protagonist as a moral voice that rallies against her slave-owning indiano husband. The indiana suffers with other African slaves and forms a friendship with one of them. This interracial sisterhood proves problematic because it minimizes important differences between the two women and depicts the African character in naïve, stereotypical terms. Despite the use of stereotypes, the play effectively denounces Spanish indianos who reaped economic benefits from the Spanish-Cuban slave trade and gives voice to memories too often hushed and repressed in Spain.

Disciplines: Comparative Literature
History

Substantive Tags: Cultural History, Gender and Sexuality, Immigration/Migration, Memory Studies, Visual Arts

Research Networks: None of the Above

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