Las representaciones de la Diáspora en la literatura infantil y juvenil vasca

Abstract

After some considerations about the critical Studies that Migrations and Multiculturalism have generated in the Iberian context, the purpose of our paper will be to analyze the representation of the Basque Diaspora in literature for children written in Basque language. Our hypothesis will be that the representation of America was primarily negative until the 1960s. America was seen as a good place to work, but a bad place to die; a place that put at risk the preservation of “Basqueness,” which was rooted, according to traditional Basque nationalism promoted by Sabino Arana, in the Catholic religion, the Basque language, and the Basque race. More recent publications in Basque literature for children, however, have enriched and updated the representation of America in Basque literary texts, presenting new transnational and hybrid identities, identities that are far away from an essentialist and racist concept of the Basque Nation.