Event Description
Today, more Palestinians live outside of their territories than in them. Many migrated to Latin America by the turn of the 20th century, and today the largest community is in Chile. As a member of that diaspora, Chilean writer and scholar Lina Meruane – author of Palestina en pedazos, Palestina por ejemplo, and Zona ciega – will discuss the process of assimilation of those early migrants and the quest for identity among their descendants in the 21st century. Contrary to the dictum that “the elders would leave and their children would forget,” the Palestinian identity has never been neglected.
Lina Meruane will be in conversation with Natalia Brizuela and Alejandro Múnera.
Speaker
Lina Meruane is a writer and scholar who has won many literary honors, most recently the prestigious Premio Iberoamericano de Letras José Donoso in 2023. She received writing grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (US 2004), the National Endowment for the Arts (US 2010), and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin (Germany 2017). Her most recent novel, Sistema Nervioso (Nervous System) has been translated into ten languages. In 2022, Meruane published Ensayo General, an anthology of essays written between 1998 and 2021. She taught Latin American Cultures and Creative Writing at New York University for several years, and now splits her time between Spain and Chile.
Discussants
Natalia Brizuela is the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Chair and Professor in the Departments of Film & Media and Spanish & Portuguese at UC Berkeley. Her work focuses on photography, film and contemporary art, critical theory and aesthetics of both Spanish America and Brazil.
Alejandro Múnera is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. His research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary literature, visual art, and critical theory from Spanish America, Brazil, and the Caribbean, mainly focusing on queer, trans, and feminist culture, disease and disability studies, and the genealogies of black, indigenous, and LGBT social movements in the Americas. Alejandro’s dissertation titled “Vital Signs: The Aesthetics of Sexual Politics in Latin America” explores the literary and visual practices advanced by countercultural social movements for sexual liberation in Colombia and Brazil in the 1970s and 80s.
Co-sponsorship