Abstract
Rivera-Valdés’ main intention with this novel was to satirize a Cuban exile living in Miami and her recalcitrant anti-Castro position. The result is a narrative that reinforces the value of the spoken word, of Spanish as preferred language of expression and of emotions as key to our identity. This analysis focuses precisely on those issues and further attempts to problematize ideas of memory and truth and their relationship with the present and the past from a critical perspective akin to the one used by Alan Watts in The Wisdom of Insecurity (2011) with respect to the inextricable dependency of memory with present experience and their dynamic and reciprocal origin.
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Bortolotto, M.C. (2018). Untangling Literary Knots: Writing, Memory, and Identity in Sonia Rivera-Valdés’ Rosas de Abolengo (2011). In: Das, A., Quinn-Sánchez, K., Shaul, M. (eds) Contemporary U.S. Latinx Literature in Spanish. Literatures of the Americas. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02598-4_5
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