Chapter 10 Hospitality Rituals and Caribbean Migrants: Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood, Ana Lydia Vega’s “Encancaranublado,” and Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman1
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Abstract
In “The Caribean Imaginary in ‘Encancaranublado’ by Ana Lydia Vega,” Diana Vélez argues that the Caribbean “is a space that can be theorized productively within both paradigms: both diaspora and borderland” (828). This chapter proposes that hospitality can also offer an apt theoretical frame to analyze the interactions between and among migrants on one hand, and between migrants and Americans on the other. The chapter examines Ana Lydia Vega’s story as part of a series of literary works that gravitate around acts of hospitality. Vega’s “Encancaranublado” and Edwidge Dunticat’s “Children of the Sea” and “Caroline’s Wedding” establish a direct connection between contemporary migrants and the slave trade. Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood and Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman tackle the stasis and the hostility of the arrival. If Wolf’s character is literally suspended between land and sea, between being a ‘dry’ or a ‘wet’ foot, between standing a chance of being welcome to America or being sent to Guantánamo, Goldman’s characters undergo a process of depersonalization that transforms them into slaves and zombies. The four examples show that the arrival to an American harbor never translates as hospitality, and that mobility for Caribbean migrants often translates as another variation of mobility ‘in chains.’