Emigration: a history of all
The main reason for an immigrant to reach any big city is to prosper. The case of Spanish immigrants was different, because they did not reach the new world with the purpose of carving a future from scratch. They wanted to make some money and return as soon as they could to Spain. However, the Civil War and World War II forced many to desist. What Spain had to offer was misery and, in some cases, repression.
The novel The Daughters of the Captain by the writer María Dueñas tells the story of three young people who have just arrived in New York, who have to face life alone after the sudden death of their father. The action of the novel is located on 14th Street, where the epicenter of the New York Spanish colony was established. There they made a pilgrimage looking for the flavors offered by the Casa Moneo grocery store. Just above, was the New Continental. Now in that same place there is an educational space.
The fictional story of "The Daughters of the Captain", the new novel by María Dueñas, could be that of thousands of real women who during the thirties were part of a diaspora practically forgotten, women who escaped with the dream of returning. Victoria, Mona and Luz follow their father to New York almost by obligation and the man dies as soon as he arrives and then begins the ordeal of the three protagonists, who had to make do with themselves from that moment to prosper in the Big Apple.
The author of El tiempo entre costuras tells that the point of departure of the book was to narrate the grievances suffered by migrant women. For Dueñas, the vital journey of women who suffer from this misfortune, their emotions, sensations and feelings, is valuable. Precisely because females are fundamental to cohesive their families, so that their children are raised in a united environment, so that their husbands have an easier life.Undoubtedly, this book is a well-deserved tribute to women wrestlers, their courage and courage to carve their own way in difficult times.
Dueñas chose younger women as protagonists, who, having no family responsibilities, had more possibilities to act and to advance in an intriguing and intriguing plot. The ambition of the Arenas sisters to prosper is crossed with betrayals, passions, revenge and achievements.And he chooses New York as a scenario because it is a territory that any person who pretends to prosper in life craves, as well as, how he did the migration from the countryside to the city in Spain at the time of developmentalism. In search of several sites that could offer him potential for a fiction, he learned about immigration to the United States and called him more attention because of his personal connection.Within the novel, New York becomes one more character.
The metropolis of the thirties is not very different from the current one, but its dynamics were different. Although I was suffering from the Great Depression crisis, I still attracted people in droves looking for an opportunity. It was the time of construction such as the Empire State Building and bridges, such as the George Washington Bridge, housing and other businesses.And that was precisely what caught Dueñas. A city full of small colonies of immigrants in neighborhoods to walk around the house. The daughters of the Captain combine that duality of hard work every day in a simple house of meals, of being between pouts and serving tables. A New York that is opening up to the life of the protagonists, more sophisticated, more overwhelming, richer in material and cultural.
